Eugenie Bouchard, Wimbledon 2018: Former finalist beats Zhu Lin before awkward post-match interview
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Your support makes all the difference.Former Wimbledon finalist Eugenie Bouchard kept alive her hopes of reaching the main draw of the Championships for a sixth successive year with a dominant 6-0, 6-2 victory over China’s Zhu Lin – but her curt post-match interview raised plenty of eyebrows.
It took Bouchard just fifty-one minutes to beat Zhu at Roehampton, but the Canadian cut a terse figure after her win and seemed less than pleased when asked by a steward to speak to the BBC before exiting the court.
“I played pretty solid, I’m happy with the way I started and it is always important to start well on grass,” she commented after her win, giving brief, one sentence answers.
It has been another difficult season for Bouchard who has continued to plummet down the WTA rankings.
In 2014 Bouchard became the first Canadian tennis player to reach the singles final of a Grand Slam, knocking out Angelique Kerber and Simona Halep before losing 6-3, 6-0 to Petra Kvitová.
It was just Bouchard’s sixth grand slam tournament, following impressive runs to the semi-finals of the Australian and French Opens.
After the tournament her world ranking rose to an all-time career high of No. 5, but she began struggling with injuries and poor form and has not made it beyond the quarter-finals of a Slam since.
Bouchard failed to make it beyond the opening round in two of her last three Wimbledon appearances and in January 2018 dropped out of the top 100 for the first time in five years.
She is currently ranked No. 191 and failed to reach the main draw of this year’s French Open, retiring injured from her match against Dalila Jakuopovic of Slovenia while trailing 6-0, 2-1.
However Bouchard’s hopes of making it into the main draw of Wimbledon began on a far more positive note, as she breezed past Zhu.
She won the first set in a brisk nineteen minutes without even dropping a game, before wrapping up the second set in similarly emphatic fashion.
Bouchard has recently started working with veteran coach Robert Lansdorp – who has previously worked with tennis greats such as Tracy Austin, Monica Seles and Lindsay Davenport – and the Canadian briefly paid tribute to him after her win.
“He’s been really helpful and I think that he’s a great coach,” Bouchard added after her win.
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