Slumping Eugenie Bouchard Wants This “Learning Experience” To Be Over

Having now lost 10 of her last 12 matches and exiting in the first round at Wimbledon after reaching the finals the year before, Eugenie Bouchard is searching for Answers.

“I definitely felt tight in the first set,” Bouchard said after losing to Ying Ying Duan yesterday. “But I also felt very unprepared for this match. That’s unfortunate.”

The 21-year-old added that the ab injury that forced her out of Eastbourne has not healed.

“I have a grade 2 tear in my ab,” she said. “Probably wouldn’t have been smart to play here, but I couldn’t pass on Wimbledon. So I did kind of minimal preparation to save myself for the match.

“In my head, it was no question I was going to play, even though I was advised not to. It’s just the way I am. It’s so hard to be forced not to play tennis, especially at Wimbledon. I was going out there to play, no matter what.”

Bouchard reached a career-high ranking No. 5 last fall, but after failing to defend virtually any of her runner-up points from her Wimbledon final of a year ago, the World No. 12 will plunge outside the Top 20.

“In a way I’m going to be kind of happy to put this period behind me, for sure,” she said. “Very disappointed in my last couple months. It has kind of been a stressful time, you know, these big tournaments that everyone was talking about to me.

“I’m going to be looking forward to not having people ask me every single day about the points I have to defend. That will be nice.”

With the recent slump, some have identified new coach Sam Sumyk as a fall guy, and Bouchard agreed changes could be made.

“Maybe I should,” Bouchard responded when asked about making changes to her team. “Yes, we’ve definitely not started well at all. But, you know, I believe in him and he believes in me. As of right now, it’s still the plan.

“But, yeah, there definitely has to be some improvement, some changes, because I expect to do a little better than this.”

Bouchard will now return to North America with a clean slate, ready for the hardcourts, ready to use her newfound experience.

“It’s been a huge learning process to have great results and then have, you know, so much attention, then have bad results, just learning about the ups and downs of life and tennis, how things won’t always good perfectly like I expect them to.

“So it’s just been a lot of learning. I’m always trying to keep the belief and stay true to myself and do what I need to do to become as good as I know I can be. So it’s really just been kind of eye‑opening, a learning experience. But I’m good for the learning experience to be over now.”