Retired tennis star Eugenie Bouchard has opened up on the chaos that consumed her life – and prompted a ‘rebellious phase’ – after bursting onto the scene when she made the 2014 Wimbledon final at the tender age of 20.
The former player retired at the Canadian Open last summer at the age of 31, and has since transitioned to playing pickleball professionally, after calling time on a 16-year career that saw her reach the semi-finals at the Australian Open and Roland-Garros.
But the high watermark of Bouchard’s career came at the beginning of her travails on the WTA Tour, when she played her Wimbledon final against Petra Kvitova in only her second run-out in SW19.
Bouchard ultimately lost out to the Czech star but was catapulted into a new realm of fame in the wake of her breakout run.
‘After that final, my life became chaotic: media attention, sponsors, changes on every level,’ she told the Tennis Insider Club. ‘Everything around my changed, which didn’t help short-term, plus the weight of expectations.
‘Before, winning was amazing and losing normal – now winning was expected, losing a catastrophe. Anything short of a final was failure.’
While the afterglow of making the final and gaining a career-high ranking of world No 5 sustained her for some time, Bouchard went on to admit that the sky-high expectations the achievement had set took a toll on her mental health in the years which followed.
‘After an excellent 2014, 2015 was very difficult for me,’ she continued. ‘It was tough because mental health wasn’t discussed like it is today, and back then I was suffering a lot – I simply didn’t dare talk about it.
‘Even admitting you saw a therapist was strange. People thought you were crazy or weak. I’m happy it’s become a completely normal topic, glad things have changed, but I went through a very difficult period and couldn’t talk about it.’
Increased scrutiny on her form led to Bouchard looking to express herself in different ways, with the Montreal-born star admitting that she tested her rebellious streak by shaving an under-cut into her hairstyle.
‘To be fair, I wanted a very small under-cut thing,’ she said on the Ok Sweetie podcast. ‘I don’t know what happened, but it was literally half my head.
‘I feel like I look like a cancer patient. I was like, “This is not the look I was going for”. It was way worse than I intended, but it caused me not to get my Rolex deal renewed.’
Bouchard adopted the style while enjoying some downtime in Miami following her second-round exit at the 2016 Australian Open, but the stylistic folly is alleged to have come with long-term consequences.
She went on to claim that Rolex had emailed her agent to suggest that the new look ‘did not align’ with the storied watchmakers’ public image.
Bouchard was ranked No 1 by SportsPro in their ‘World’s 50 Most Marketable Athletes’ list in the year after her Wimbledon success, and was frequently featured in publications outside of the tennis-specific sphere, even taking part in a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition.
Since taking a step back from tennis and switching to pickleball, she has continued to maintain a strong following on Instagram, with over 2.3million followers to her name.
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But Bouchard was keen to stress that she felt like at times she had been pigeon-holed for her looks during her playing career.
‘I don’t want to be just painted with a broad stroke of, “OK, that’s all she is”,’ she continued. ‘There are layers and layers and layers.
‘Sometimes I just feel like people would label me as “OK, she just likes to post this on Instagram or something”… there’s so much more to me than that.
‘That’s not what I think about 24/7. It’s a portion of my personality.
‘Just assuming someone is only surface-level, or what they show, that’s just the feeling I’ve gotten sometimes.’
