GENIE’S BACK
Team’s hotel looked ‘more like a hospital’ during injury-racked World Group II clash
Eugenie Bouchard Celebrates defeating Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine At the Fed Cup At Montreal’s IGA StAdium Saturday. She Also won on Sunday, then her teammates won A deciding doubles match. Canada’s 3-2 win keeps it in World Group II.
Eugenie Bouchard did her part with a pair of singles wins and the rookie doubles team of Gabriela Dabrowski and Bianca Andreescu supplied the deciding point as Canada upset Ukraine 3-2 in Fed Cup tennis action at the Jarry Tennis Centre.
“I’m proud of myself this weekend,” Bouchard said after she defeated Lesia Tsurenko 4-6, 6-2, 7-6 (6) in the first match Sunday. “I had a job coming in here and I did it. I felt good with my tennis, good with my movement and it worked out the way I thought.”
Bouchard, whose career has been in a downward spiral since her last Fed Cup appearance in 2015, showed the kind of fighting spirit that earned a top-10 ranking earlier in her career as she prevailed in a match that lasted two hours and 39 minutes and finished with both players fighting through leg cramps.
“Matches today have become physical battles and they transform into mental battles, so I feel I won the mental battle today,” said Bouchard. “I stayed calm, ( but I) still went for it, played my game and it worked.”
The weekend presented a physical and mental challenge for the Canadian team, which lost its No. 2 singles player when Françoise Abanda fell during a training session Saturday morning and suffered whiplash.
The injury forced Canadian captain Sylvain Bruneau to juggle his lineup. He used the 17-yearold Andreescu in the opening singles match Saturday against Tsurenko. The youngster acquitted herself well, but was forced to retire in the third set because of cramps and a strained left calf muscle.
Bruneau decided Andreescu couldn’t play singles Sunday and he was forced to use Dabrowski, a top-10 doubles player who rarely plays singles.
For 20 minutes, it appeared to be an inspired choice as Dabrowski raced to a 6-3 win in the first set, but her limited experience in singles was exposed as Kateryna Bondarenko recovered to win 3-6, 6-2, 6-1.
But Andreescu was back on the court late Sunday afternoon as she joined Dabrowski for a 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 win over the more experienced Ukrainian duo of Bondarenko and Olga Savchuk. While Dabrowski is a top-10 doubles player with a pair of Grand Slam mixed doubles titles on her resumé, it was her first time playing with Andreescu.
“I think playing singles helped Gaby because it took some of the nerves away and helped her get used to the court,” said Bruneau. “I was hoping that Bianca would be able to play the doubles where she didn’t have to cover as much of the court. Her ground game was solid and Gaby did a good job with her movement at the net.”
“The leg didn’t bother me,” said Andreescu, whose left calf was heavily taped. “I think the adrenalin kicked in and I learned a lot playing with a Grand Slam champion like Gaby.”
The win kept Canada in World Group II for next year, while Ukraine dropped back into European Zone play.
“We knew we were facing a tough team in Ukraine and then we had to deal with the injuries,” said Bruneau. “The hotel room last night looked more like a hospital.”
Bouchard saved 11 of the 12 break points she faced in the third set and prevailed despite 59 unforced errors.
The unforced errors and poor serving were Bouchard’s undoing in the first set. She made 21 unforced errors and had a firstserve percentage well under 50 per cent. After Tsurenko broke Bouchard’s serve for a 3-2 lead, the Canadians battled back with a break in the eighth game after falling behind 40-15. Tsurenko followed with a second break and then served out the set.
It was Tsurenko who made the costly mistakes in the second set. After the two exchanged service breaks, Tsurenko lost her serve in the sixth and eighth games and on both occasions she doublefaulted on break point.
Bouchard said she hoped her performance over the weekend will give her confidence when she returns to the WTA Tour. She has a 4-6 record this year and has fallen to No. 117. She’ll have to play qualifying next weekend when she begins her preparations for the French Open with a clay-court tournament in Rabat, Morocco.