The trick is figuring out what this means. To me, it changes everything, certainly with Canadian tennis, and to some degree, with Canadian sport.
Look, Wimbledon isn’t some middle-tier tournament, some event you claim and then have to remember which company sponsored it when you won it. Eugenie Bouchard is playing in the final of the greatest tennis tournament on earth. One of the greatest sporting events on earth, particularly if you’ve been there and felt the grandeur, the history, the magic at the All-England Club.
Mike Weir won the Masters and changed, for a time, the conversation about Canada and golf.
Well, Bouchard has already changed the conversation about tennis in Canada, and she hasn’t won this tournament. Not yet, and 2011 champion Petra Kvitova is standing in her way.
But ever since Bouchard, now 20, claimed the Wimbledon junior singles and doubles titles in a single season, this has been the target: to get back to London and win the real deal. I’ve said this more than once in recent months, but it’s my belief she is on track to ultimately become the most celebrated female athlete in Canadian history, and possibly — if she becomes all that seems to be out there for her — one of the country’s greatest athletes, period.
Bouchard has arrived at a time when only Serena Williams can lay claim to being a superstar on the women’s tour, and it’s hard to see Williams stretching her dazzling career much further. Bouchard, meanwhile, has the game and the appeal to do all what Maria Sharapova has done, and maybe more. In terms of Canadian tennis, she has set a new standard, one that Milos Raonic will aim to match on Friday in his Wimbledon semifinal against the great Roger Federer.
We’re not playing for most improved or 15th place any more. For years, Daniel Nestor rode pretty much alone as a Canadian player who could challenge in the world’s significant tennis tournaments, and that was as a doubles player. Otherwise, we paid notice to those who could crack the top 100 in singles, or maybe the top 50, but understood the sky was not the limit.
Now, whether you’re an up-and-coming female player like Francoise Abanda or an up-and-coming Canadian male like Filip Peliwo, you have to understand the bar for excellence in Canadian tennis has now been set much, much higher.
Bouchard hasn’t lost a set in six matches to get to the final, and her toughest challenge might have come in the first round against Daniela Hantuchova. She battled hard to win a first set tie-break against Simona Halep of Romania today, fighting back from a 2-4 deficit in the tiebreak, then overwhelmed / bullied Halep in the second set to win 7-6 (5), 6-2. Even some dodgy nerves in the final moments when she couldn’t close out on five match points before doing so on a sixth couldn’t diminish Bouchard’s performance against the No. 3 player in the world, delivering the kind of dominant effort she hadn’t been able to deliver against Li Na in Melbourne or Sharapova at Roland Garros.
With her new buddy, Jim Parsons of Big Bang Theory fame, in her box alongside her coach Nick Saviano, her younger brother William and her mother Julie, Bouchard demonstrated once again her ability to learn from defeat and use that knowledge to take the next step.
At times, she was betrayed by over-aggressive instincts, but that was about the worst you could say about her game, other than her late match nerves, on a day when she served much better than she had in a March defeat to Halep, and refused to let the Romanian’s apparent ankle injury in the first set distract her.
Now it’s Raonic’s turn, a chance to turn around his 0-4 lifetime record against the 32-year-old Federer, who aches for one more Grand Slam title (his 18th) and knows that with Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray already out, this might be his last, best chance.
Raonic, his game vastly improved under the tutelage of Ivan Ljubicic and Riccardo Piatti since he last met Federer at the 2013 Australian Open, has more than just a puncher’s chance in this one. He should, if he’s on, bring much more to the table than he did in any of his quartet of losses to the Swiss master, in particular a vastly improved return of serve game. They’ve played once on grass before, and that might have been their closest match.
Centre Court is like home to Federer, but Raonic, having tasted the lights on the biggest stage in the world, won’t be intimidated this time around.
Bouchard, against a decidedly less accomplished opponent, mind you, has shown her compatriot the way.
If he can join her, well, we’ll have to have this conversation all over again, won’t we?