@Sportshorn
Another tournament another early round loss for Canadian Eugenie Bouchard. The often dubbed “future of women’s tennis” three years ago, was anything but in her opening round match at the US Open. Bouchard racked up 46 unforced errors and fell to World No 89 Evgeniya Rodina 7-6-6-1 in an hour and 24 minutes on Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Bouchard, who’s ranking has fallen from fifth in the world to now 76th in the past three years, looked out of sorts throughout the match hitting multiple balls from both her forehand and backhand sides either long or into the net. Her first serve which has plagued her all year long was also shaky. Today it was just 57 percent. Rodina’s was 72 percent.
“It’s one of those matches you kind of want to forget about,” said Bouchard. “I know obviously the unforced error count was a bit too high, especially at the end of that first set. I just didn’t really know what to do out there.”
Bouchard and Rodina broke each other twice in the opening set thanks in part to errors from both players. In the first set tiebreak the 23- year old Bouchard could not keep the ball in the court. Of the seven points won by Rodina in the breaker, six came off of Bouchard groundstroke errors.
Bouchard got off to a good start breaking her Russian opponent in the opening game of the second set but it turned out to be the lone bright spot of the set for her. She never won a game from that point on. Rodina, won of the few mothers on tour, broke the Canadian three times in the second set as Bouchard kept missing easy shots. Some misses coming at times when Rodina was completely out of position. An easy overhead into the net in the third game didn’t help matters either. Rodina served out the match to advance to the second round for the second straight year.
Bouchard, the 2013 Wimbledon Junior Girls’ champion, has now won just three of her last 12 matches and has fallen in the first round in her last two grand slams. Quite a turn around from three years ago when at 20-years old she reached the Australian Open and French Open semi-finals and played in her first and only Grand Slam final at Wimbledon.
“My confidence is not high at all at this point in time,” said Bouchard. “I definitely — yeah, I definitely had question marks about what my level would be like coming out today.
Rodina will now face fourth seed Elina Svitolina in the next round. Svitolina, who has won five tournaments in 2017, won her opening round match in three sets.
