Simona Halep and Eugenie Bouchard: A slice of the future
2014: The year of surprises
Simply put, 2014 was the year of surprises in tennis. New faces were crowned champions; old warhorses rediscovered their form, and some really talented wiz-kids made their presence felt in the sport’s biggest stages.
Two of these wiz-kids are Simona Halep and Eugenie Bouchard who made heads turn their way, with consistent power-packed performances. The former showed immense determination in her steady climb in the rankings while the latter saw qualified for her maiden year-end championships at Singapore to end the season as they began it – on a high.
Halep and Bouchard: The stories of success
The way the Romanian and Canadian had been playing this year, it looked as if they were in the tennis circuit for years. It seems unreal to believe that both made their respective breakthroughs just a year ago. The duo may have not won any majors this year, but the promise distinctly looms large in the near horizon. If both Halep and Bouchard carry forward and build on their professional zeniths of the current season, it seems a fair bet for one or both of them to lift a Grand Slam in the 2015 season.
Each of their triumphs has come by way of diligence and painstaking nurturing to build and refine on it. Missteps did come their way but their rebounding from all the pitfalls more than recompensed for their stumbles. In that respect, 2014 is their biggest learning curve, aside of their breakthrough year of 2013.
Halep and Bouchard have are both individualistic and unique in their game. But there is one major factor that that determines and governs their performances – aggression. In several key matches, their aggression – both in their game as well as in their mental outlook – proved to be the distinguishing factor between them and their opponent; irrespective of how tougher the latter looked to be on paper.
Of the two, it was the 23-year-old Halep who exploited this facet to the hilt, notching wins against an in-form Ana Ivanovic, Petra Kvitova and more recently subduing the red-hot streak of Serena Williams at Singapore in their round-robin match. The Canadian meanwhile, still finding her way about in these aspects.
Rise of expectations: The future
The rise of Halep and Bouchard has been justifiably exhilarating, but there were a few prices to be paid as well. Especially in disappointing losses like the one Halep suffered against Williams in the final at Singapore, where she was unable to muster any defences that helped beat Williams, just a handful of days prior to the final. In case of Bouchard, the 20-year-old ended up winless in her three round-robin matches at the WTA finals.
They may have made it to their maiden Grand Slam finals – French Open for Halep and Wimbledon for Bouchard – but as their respective results show, they were methodically outclassed by their more experienced opponents. Their inexperience may have been the bane for them this year. But come next year, fuelled by sheerness of these triumphs, expectations will surely rise further.
Not many players have been able to replicate their initial year’s successes, struggling to retain the clean rhythm which propelled them to the forefront in the first place. Be it first time majors’ winners like Petra Kvitova, Ana Ivanovic, Svetlana Kuznetsova or Maria Sharapova. Or those making it to the penultimate stages of majors and impressing everyone around, even if unable to win the title, like Sloane Stephens, Angelique Kerber or Dominika Cibulkova.
Many assurances of the sport’s future are held by these two youngsters. These assurances notwithstanding, it is their counter-acting responses to the expectations that will solely determine the road ahead for the Constanta and Montreal residents to maintain their heightened sway.