On No.3 Court, Ying-Ying Duan, ranked No.147, leaned into her two-handed backhand and let out a grunt of satisfaction as her shot skidded past her opponent, Eugenie Bouchard, for a winner.
Half an hour later, on No.1 Court, Jana Cepelova, ranked No.106, laced a forehand crosscourt to break serve in the third set against Simona Halep. Cepelova celebrated by raising her fist and briefly strutting across the grass with it held high above her head.
What did these two moments have in common? They were both remarkably calm gestures of confidence, considering the situations that Duan and Cepelova found themselves in on Tuesday afternoon. In Halep and Bouchard, they were facing last year’s French Open finalist and Wimbledon finalist respectively, highly ranked young players who just 12 months earlier had been touted as the future of the WTA.
Right now, 12 months feels like a very long time ago. Watching the way the four women competed today, you might never have guessed which ones were the favourites, and which were the underdogs. We hear a lot about the “fear factor” that benefits the top players; today Duan and Cepelova benefited from a “no fear factor” in their upset victories. They took the rallies to their more famous opponents and never wavered.
Duan, despite being ranked 135 spots below Bouchard, could hardly have been intimidated as she stood across the net from her. The Canadian’s early losses are no longer headline-worthy stories. She has now won just two of her last 14 matches, nearly all of them to players outside the top 20. Her own ranking, after peaking at No. 5 in 2014, is set to tumble out of the top 20 after this defeat. And she has been injured. Bouchard, who retired from a match in Eastbourne last week, says she is suffering from an abdominal tear, but didn’t want to “miss out” on Wimbledon.
Whatever physical problems Bouchard is having, her slump has obviously taken a toll on her mentally. After her first-round loss at the French Open, she admitted to being out of answers. “It’s a little bit of a low point for me,” she said. If anything, after her 7-6(3), 6-4 loss to Duan, she sounded even lower.
Bouchard was asked afterwards if she needed to make a change to her coaching team, which has been led by Victoria Azarenka’s former mentor, Sam Sumyk, since the start of the year.
“Maybe I should,” Bouchard said. “But I believe in him and he believes in me. There definitely has to be some improvement, because I expect to do better than this.”
Other players who have been mired in losing streaks have talked about how they stop getting nervous, because losing begins to feel inevitable. Bouchard has lost her share of leads of late, and she has also looked thinner in recent months. Is she trying too hard to turn things around and live up to the sky-high expectations of 2014? When you can’t control what’s happening during matches, it would be a natural reaction to work even harder at the things you can control, like practice and physical training.
Maybe the best news for Bouchard is that she’ll have some time off to heal physically and get away from the game mentally. But she remains anxious for the next, presumably successful phase of her career to begin.
“I’m ready for the learning experience to be over,” Bouchard said as she left Wimbledon.
*****
On clay I had too much pressure and I couldn't handle it
If Bouchard’s need for a break has been obvious for a while, Halep’s is still news to many of us. Coming into Wimbledon, she was ranked No.3, she had won titles in Dubai and Indian Wells, and she had pushed Serena to the brink of defeat in Miami. Yet after a mediocre clay season and an early loss the French Open, Halep claimed she had “no expectations” for the grass swing, despite having reached the semi-finals at the All England Club last year.
“On clay I had too much pressure, and I couldn’t handle it,” Halep said in Birmingham earlier this month. “I was blocked. I couldn’t play at the French Open. After that, I took some days off at home and relaxed my mind,” she continued. “I wanted to come back stronger and more relaxed...I just want to enjoy without pressure.”
Halep may or may not have felt any pressure on Tuesday, but didn’t enjoy the grass at Wimbledon for long. She spent much of her 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 loss to Cepelova on the defensive; yet even when she had the opportunity to attack, she struggled – Halep committed 34 unforced errors to Cepelova’s 20. Often, with a chance to take control of a point, Halep pulled the trigger too early and misfired instead.
What cost Halep the most, and what kept her from taking advantage of Cepelova’s nerves in the third set, was her serve. Halep double-faulted seven times and won just 30 per cent of points on her second serve (compared to 50 per cent for Cepelova).
Halep says she’s running low on emotional fuel at the moment, and it’s true that she has played a lot of tennis over the first six months of this season. As her loss today showed, the fact that she stands 5ft 6in and has a second serve that remains attackable, means that beating taller, more powerful opponents will always be, at some level, an uphill battle.
*****
Halep and Bouchard lost on consecutive days at the French Open. At Wimbledon they lost on the same day, but the results weren’t as surprising. This time, as the matches went on, they became more about what Duan and Cepelova were doing well, and how calm and determined they stayed down the stretch.
There’s a feeling that the audiences give off at Wimbledon whenever an underdog makes a bid for an upset. It’s one of warm appreciation, tinged with a little bit of well-mannered sorrow for the star who is losing. That was the feeling on Courts No.1 and 3 as these matches unfolded. It’s hard to watch Halep and especially Bouchard at the moment, but Duan and Cepelova reminded us that one of the pleasures of a major tournament is seeing unheralded players take over the sport’s biggest stages and discover that, in the end, they had nothing to fear after all.
