So that’s it. But not really.
Such is the nature of the tennis calendar that it only seems like the season ended for both Milos Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard on a Monday that leaked into Tuesday. Raonic played until 2:28 a.m. Tuesday morning and it still wasn’t quite enough to stay alive in this year’s U.S. Open, while Bouchard, earlier in the day, nearly fainted in the heat in her battle against Ekaterina Makarova before ultimately dropping a two-set verdict.
Raonic literally ran his heart out to the last point, scrambling back and forth across the Arthur Ashe Stadium court until Kei Nishikori finally put him out of his misery with an unreturnable volley into the open court. It wasn’t a classic, yet it was a monumental clash between two top 10 players with contrasting styles that lasted five sets and could have gone either way. Raonic gave all he had to give, and the tennis fans who stayed in the stadium and those who kept watching on television were rewarded for their patience and passion.
This wasn’t a night/morning to pick apart the strengths and weaknesses of Raonic’s game. He led two sets to one, played brilliantly at times, but couldn’t hold on against a very talented opponent who was in position to defeat Rafael Nadal at the French Open earlier this year before being defeated by injury.
The point of this match, at least from the Canadian’s point of view, is that he took to one of the tennis world’s grand stages and put his heart and soul into it before losing a marathon to an excellent adversary. He was massively disappointed afterwards, but it truly was another step forward even in defeat.
Bouchard, as well, found herself in an extraordinarily tough match. Makarova, while not a big name on the women’s tour, is an experienced top 20 player, a rare leftie on the women’s circuit and one capable of beating the best. She might have beaten the higher-seeded Bouchard anyway, but the fact that the Canadian found herself in need of a medical timeout on a steamy New York afternoon just made the mountain steeper.
In a year in which she has become the WTA’s new glamour girl, a series of hard-nosed veterans — Petra Kvitova, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Sam Stosur and Makarova — have served notice that Bouchard still has some hard lessons to learn. This may not be a particularly blessed time for the women’s tour as far as star quality, but that just means there are a lot of players fighting ferociously for all the available scraps, plus a new generation of youngsters even younger than Bouchard who are poised to make an impression of their own.
The U.S. Open is the final Grand Slam event of the season, and given the extra importance everybody in the industry puts on the majors, it’s a long wait to January and Melbourne and the next chance to make an big impression. But the tennis season doesn’t end with Flushing Meadows, of course. Raonic will be in action next week for Tennis Canada in a Davis Cup clash with Colombia that the Canadians need to win to stay in the 16-country World Group.
The men’s tour heads to Asia later this month, then back to Europe, before winding up with the World Tour Finals in London in November. Only the top eight players qualify, and Raonic has his sights set on being one of them. It’s a prestigious event and people will be watching, but it doesn’t carry the weight of the majors.
For the women, the schedule works about the same way, and it will be interesting to see how much Bouchard plays. She hasn’t played nearly as well in non-Slam scenarios this season, and she complained yesterday after her loss to Makarova about a collection of small injuries that have hampered her, particularly in the post-Wimbledon period.
So both Raonic and Bouchard will play on after the lights go dark in Queen’s, and the debate will continue as to which player is most likely to make the next big breakthrough, and where that might happen. Earlier this season, it seemed the answer to that was obvious, that Bouchard, due both to her talent and the mediocre state of the women’s tour, was in a terrific position to win a major sooner, maybe even this year. Raonic was injured in January, missed the Davis Cup tie in Japan, and took a while to get his season rolling. Once he did, however, he got on a very consistent roll, putting himself in a competitive position week-after-week on tour, including a semifinal effort at Wimbledon. That massive serve makes him a consistent factor, and there’s a sense his collaboration with coaches Riccardo Piatti and Ivan Ljubicic is gradually making him a smarter and more resourceful player.
Meanwhile, an injury to Nadal, the aging of Roger Federer (he is aging, right?) and the struggles of Andy Murray have taken a bite out of the Big Four, which may start to open up possibilities for other players after years of having that quartet (include Novak Djokovic) greedily gobble up all the big prizes in tennis.
Bouchard, whether because of nagging injuries or the enormous expectations placed on her at a time when North America is searching for the next tennis idol, was thrashed in the Wimbledon final and humiliated on her home court in Montreal at the Rogers Cup. The thinking is she needs to add layers and texture to her game, go less for the lines and find ways to work the point, and experience should make her more dangerous.
Other than Serena Williams, there isn’t a truly dominant force in the women’s game right now, and even Williams has had some down moments in 2014. So the opportunity is still very much there for Bouchard, unless even younger players like Belinda Bencic really are ready to take massive leaps forward of their own.
Really, it seems an even bet whether it will be Raonic or Bouchard who will record the next noteworthy triumph, such as becoming the first Canadian to win a Grand Slam title. Both have strengths and challenges. Bouchard does many things well, Raonic does one thing incredibly well, and it’s the most important thing in the sport. Maybe neither will go any higher than they are now, and injuries remain the great variable in a tennis tour that puts enormous physical stress on the top players.
You could even have a vigorous argument as to which player has had the better 2014 to date, something that will undoubtedly come up when the voting for the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada’s athlete of the year takes place in December.
Their futures are separate, yet intimately intertwined as generational talents from a country that hasn’t previously been known for tennis excellence.
They don’t compete against each other. Yet they really do, don’t they?