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A return to her favorite surface proved not to be a lucky charm on Tuesday for Canadian Genie Bouchard.
The 2014 Wimbledon finalist turned pickleballer, playing in her first tennis tournament since a loss in the first round of qualifying at the National Bank Open in Toronto last August, went out 7-5, 6-2 to No. 286-ranked Anna Rogers in the first round of the Hall of Fame Open in Newport, Rhode Island.
Bouchard started well, rolling to a 5-2 lead in the first set against Rogers, a 27-year-old ITF-circuit player who starred at North Carolina State and, at No. 268, is close to her career high in singles.
She’s done much better in doubles, with 19 ITF titles.
But it was a bit of a train wreck after that.
The Canadian was broken twice, at 5-3 and 5-5, to drop the first set. And after that, the shoulders slumped and the will wasn’t really there.
Bouchard didn’t appear to have trained intensively for her return – a few days working with fellow tennis player turned pickleballer Noah Rubin, who was in Newport with her – and an arrival in Newport on Sunday seemed to be the extent of it.
And that highlights the bittersweet feeling whenever she does take the court.
Bouchard is still only 31; but as much as the easy money in pickleball would be hard to turn down (from what we’ve read, the tour is paying her $1.5 million US a year), there’s always a sense of what might have been.
What if she’d made up her mind to give it one last, serious go? Even in the loss on Tuesday, through the evident rustiness and nerves, you could see a lot of that once top-level game.
Hired a quality full-time coach (she hasn’t had one for years), trained as she’s never trained before, start from the lower levels, improved her weaknesses and just gone for it?
Putting it all out there would have meant risking failure, to be sure. The level of women’s tennis has leaped forwards since her best season 11 years ago.
So even if she managed to get back to that best level, it still likely wouldn’t have given her the same result.
But if she’d done it, she’d have no regrets when she looks back on a career that undoubtedly will have a fair few of them.
Still alive in doubles
Bouchard did win her first-round doubles match in Newport on Sunday, paired with Olivia Lincer of Austria. They may play Rogers again in the quarterfinals on Thursday.
Newport tournament director Brewer Rowe told the Journal de Montréal that “from where I sit, when someone of Genie’s calibre wants to play, someone with her history, you jump at the chance.”
Whether she sold many tickets is certainly up for for debate. Although the tournament promoted her presence and she certainly may have raised the level of awareness of the event, which is a joint men’s and women’s Challenger-level tournament trying to keep competitive tennis alive at an iconic venue that hosted an ATP Tour event for decades.
To be fair, the site had been evacuated for a lightning alert early on in the previous match between No. 1 seed Tatjana Maria and canadian Kayla Cross. And a lot of people didn’t return.
No WTA ranking
Bouchard fell off the rankings chart the week of May 12, when her points from a quarterfinal effort at a W75 ITF event in Florida the previous year came off.
That’s no surprise; the Montreal native simply hasn’t played much tennis – just two events since Sept. 2023.
From what we understand, her sponsorship contract with clothing and shoe company New Balance requires her to play a couple of tennis events a year. Which makes sense; Bouchard’s brand is built upon her accomplishments as a tennis player, not as a pickleballer.
Her last Wimbledon was all the way back in 2019; her last Grand Slam appearance was a third-round effort at the 2020 edition of Roland Garros, which was held in the fall.
Bouchard’s last main-draw victory at the WTA level was a first-round win over Dayana Yastremska at the Madrid Open in 2023, coming out of the qualifying.
In May, she was announced for an eight-player “legends” exhibition in Luxembourg to take place in October. Luxembourg held an indoor WTA tournament for 25 years, before loisng its slot after the 2021 event. It touts her as “the first active player to participate under the current format.”
Although that might not be true by the time October rolls around.
A career finale in Montreal?
The organizers at the Omnium Banque Nationale, which begins on July 27, have been circumspect as to whether Bouchard, who received a wild card into the qualifying the last two years, will be in Montreal.
“We expect that she’ll make a request (for a wild card). We’ll see,” Omnium Banque Nationale tournament director Valérie Tétrault said last Thursday, when the main draw entry list (and wild cards to Bianca Andreescu and Victoria Mboko) were revealed.
But two sources Open Court talked to Tuesday said the rumour going around was that Bouchard would receive a wild card – whether to the main draw – five are still to be handed out – or to the qualifying was unclear. And after her tournament ended, there would be some sort of ceremony at which Bouchard would officially, finally, end her tennis career.
That’s unconfirmed; we’ll know more when Tennis Canada announces the rest of its wild cards next week. But it makes sense, especially as the women are playing in Bouchard’s hometown of Montreal this year.
A similar dynamic will be at play in Toronto where 35-year-old Vasek Pospisil, who played his first competitive match since last November in the qualifying of the Winnipeg Challenger last weekend, will also get a wild card.
It’s likely a main-draw wild card from what we’re told, which is a pretty nice gift as the men’s event only has five to distribute. That said, there are only five Canadian men in the top 400 of the ATP Tour rankings – Félix Auger-Aliassime, Denis Shapovalov and Gabriel Diallo (who are all directly in) and Liam Draxl and Alexis Galarneau, who should get main-draw wild cards.
Both Pospisil and Bouchard are expected to be part of the English-language television coverage on Sportsnet, the last we heard.
So there should be some pathos to this year’s Canadian event, as a couple of talented, appealing players who very much put Canadian tennis on the map say their goodbyes.
Time flies.
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