Eugenie Bouchard reached her first and only Grand Slam final at Wimbledon in 2014, losing to Petra Kvitova in straight sets.
A remarkable season in 2014 saw the Canadian make three consecutive semi-finals at the Australian and French Open, before going one better at Wimbledon.
Eugenie Bouchard’s subsequent career drop-off and coaching woes saw the Canadian fail to ever recreate her form of 2014.
After her three semi-final appearances propelled her into the top five, the then 20-year-old finished the following year as the world number 48.
Despite Bouchard finally winning her first WTA title in four years in 2020, shoulder surgery the next year was quickly followed by a 17-month hiatus.
Currently sat just 16 places inside the top 1000 in the WTA Live rankings, Bouchard has sidestepped into both pickleball and punditry, despite still occasionally competing on the tour.
Eugenie Bouchard highlights her big Wimbledon regret 10 years on
The Canadian has had a peculiar career of one enormous year-long peak, followed by slightly unremarkable ones surrounding it.
A keen commentator, Bouchard was recently embroiled in controversy relating to Jessica Pegula’s US Open run, with the Canadian attracting some unwanted attention.
Having been forced to bat away claims that she was a ‘one-hit wonder’ – a plight faced by numerous WTA players – Bouchard reflected on some career regrets in a recent episode of the Tennis Insider Club podcast.
She said: “I did well at the beginning of the year, I made the quarters of Australia and then I made a coaching change and I look back and that is something I kind of regret because in my life I had so much going on after that Wimbledon final and attention and sponsor stuff and my life became kind of crazy.
“I wish I was working with Nick Saviano and he remained a long time coach and to this day he is like my tennis dad and mentor. But I stopped working with him at the end of this year and I wish I hadn’t.
“I wish I kept something to keep some stability,” the 30-year-old admitted. “Even if six months or a year later we would have stopped, in that crazy moment to have one thing more constant because everything around me was changing, I feel like that didn’t help with success on the court in the short term.”
A superb run followed by injury woes, coaching changes, and public criticism – sounds pretty familiar doesn’t it Emma Raducanu.
Eugenie Bouchard’s story feels eerily similar to Emma Raducanu’s
Raducanu’s US Open comedown felt like a jarring landing at the time. Since, she has yet to properly rediscover that form.
Andy Roddick criticised Raducanu’s pre-US Open scheduling choices, after the Brit chose not to play the qualifying rounds of both the Toronto and Cincinnati Open. Even her former coach Mark Petchey dubbed Raducanu’s approach as ‘dubious’.
Bouchard and Raducanu were both barely into their senior careers when they reached Grand Slam finals and immediately after faced coaching issues and injury struggles.
The early publicity and subsequent lofty expectations are clearly difficult to deal with. Raducanu’s recent retirement at the Korea Open is just the latest break she can’t catch.
While perhaps cynical and downtrodden a view, Raducanu has Bouchard’s career nosedive as an example of how things could go – it’s now down to her to try and avoid it.
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