Eugenie Bouchard has had a rough 2015 season to say the least. Bouchard only has three wins since her quarter-finals run at the Australian Open back in January and only one win since Indian Wells, in that period, she’s gone on a 6 match losing streak.
This isn’t out of the ordinary though, Bouchard struggled at tournaments outside the Grand Slams, minus her win in Nurnberg and her finals appearance in Wuhan in 2014. So this isn’t a new problem, but it has got worse.
Bouchard’s #6 ranking is in doubt with her poor performance so far this year and with so many points to defend in the next two months. Her inability to put a streak of wins together, similar to spring last year, has put a lot of pressure on her to defend points at Roland Garros and Wimbledon this year.
That being said, Bouchard has an impressive record at the Grand Slams. Last year she reached the semi-finals of three of the four, the US Open being the exception. She seems she is always ready for the pressure that comes with the biggest tournaments of the year.
So can Bouchard win the French Open?
It is quite unlikely at this point, but last year I found myself saying the same thing because of her poor play early on last year following Australia, but then she proved me wrong. Now to be fair she did win, out of no where I might add, Nurnberg the week leading up to Paris so she found her form at the right time. This year is different in that sense.
Bouchard is anything, but in form at the moment. Last year Bouchard had a record of 15-5 on the clay. This year she will be lucky to even get to half as many wins as that on the clay. She currently has a 1-3 record on the clay.
The wins and losses aside, her play has just been poor. There are three major flaws with her game right now; consistency, her inability to close out matches, and her mental attitude.
Last year the one main positive from Bouchard was her ability to control her nerves and win the important points of matches when under pressure. For example, she was down 4-1 to Carla Suarez Navarro in the third set last year at Roland Garros in the quarter-finals, but she battled back and won. This year there is none of that mental strength. Bouchard has thrown racquets, smashed racquets, buried her head in the towel, and is constantly looking up with a deer in the headlights look on her face to her coaches box.
This loss of mental toughness can be attributed to her loss of confidence from losing so much. Her coach Sam Sumyk will definitely help Bouchard improve her mental strength like when he coached Victoria Azarenka.
The next flaw in Bouchard’s game right now is her lack of consistency in matches. At times she will look like her old self from last year who was ruthless and aggressive when striking the ball, but then she will go back to being an unforced error machine. It is more of the latter at the moment.
In her last match against Navarro in Rome, Bouchard had 59 unforced errors. That is not going to win you matches, and the only reason Bouchard still almost won was because Navarro had 53 unforced errors herself. The unforced errors were a problem last year as well, but have become worse so far this year.
The third major flaw in Bouchard’s game is her struggle to close out matches. This stretches back to last year as well, but I will just focus on this year. Even at the Australian Open Bouchard made a mess of closing out matches. Bouchard was up a set and a break against Irina-Camelia Begu in her round-of-16 match-up, but started to get casual and allowed Begu to force a third set unnecessarily. Bouchard still won, but it was not a good sign.
This poor finishing also happened in her previous two matches. Zarina Diyas was down 5-0 against Bouchard in the second set of their match in Rome, but Bouchard allowed her back into the match and she only won the set 6-4.
In Bouchard’s last match against Navarro she had three opportunities to serve out the match and had a match point in the third set tiebreak, but even with all those chances to close it out, she still lost the match.
Because of these problems do not expect Bouchard to make the semi-finals like she did last year in Paris. Bouchard will reach the third round at best, unless there is a major turn around in the next week.
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