Eugenie Bouchard's pickleball journey starts now

More than a decade after she first played Serena Williams in a WTA match, Eugenie Bouchard remembers the fear.

It was the round of 32 in Cincinnati in August 2013. Bouchard was 19 and a relative newcomer on tour. Williams was, well, Serena Williams, a winner of 16 major singles titles at the time. Bouchard was sure she was going to embarrass herself and did what any nervous teenager would do — she called her mom.

“I just remember calling her and saying, ‘I’m absolutely terrified,'” Bouchard told ESPN last week. “I was sure I was going to lose 6-0, 6-0.”

Bouchard ended up taking the first set before ultimately losing the match, but it’s what she felt in the lead-up that she remembers most vividly all these years later. And, she said, that same visceral fear of the unknown, and of making a fool of herself, is exactly how she is feeling now as she is set to begin her career as a professional pickleball player this week at the PPA Masters event in Palm Springs, California.

The tournament, which gets underway Wednesday, marks Bouchard’s first-ever formal pickleball competition — and the first she has ever attended in any capacity — and she’s playing singles, doubles and mixed doubles. But this time it’s not just the on-court uncertainties that are scaring her.

“I’m like that kid going to a new school who goes to the cafeteria and doesn’t have any friends or know where anything is,” Bouchard said. “I’m completely nervous. I’m a wreck. I am nervous for playing, of course, because this is so new to me. But beyond that, I’m definitely anxious a little bit and wondering what it’s going to be like walking around a tournament or a locker room.”

The former world No. 5 tennis player and 2014 Wimbledon finalist stunned fans in September when it was announced she would be joining the Professional Pickleball Association for the 2024 season. While Bouchard insisted she is not retiring from tennis, and plans to play both sports this year, she said the PPA made her a “great offer that I really couldn’t refuse” so she will give the new sport a try. She has been playing recreationally with friends for the past several years and has watched as fellow tennis players make the transition.

So now, while many of her WTA peers are Down Under preparing for the Australian Open, Bouchard, and other converts such as Sam Querrey, Jack Sock and Donald Young are in the California desert having swapped their rackets for paddles. Querrey, who made his pickleball debut last year after retiring from tennis, has provided Bouchard with tips about what to expect.

Bouchard, who turns 30 next month, has spent the past several months training, and most days include time practicing both tennis and pickleball as well as time in the gym. The biggest adjustment has been getting used to the size of the paddle, which is significantly smaller than a racket, and putting less emphasis on the technical component of the game. Bouchard was shocked when a coach the PPA sent to work with her told her to “just go out and play” instead of doing hours of specific drills.

“I’m like, ‘Is my form good? Is this good? Is that good? What drill should we work on for this shot?’ I was going overboard, and this guy was like, ‘Whoa, you’re so unnecessarily detail-oriented about this,'” Bouchard said. “He literally told me to just go to a pickup game and just play and said that’s how I was going to improve the most.”

While she never went and played with complete strangers at the courts near her home in the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami — because of “too much social anxiety” — she practiced with friends, most of whom she played junior tennis with. But she has been impressed with the sheer number of players she has seen on any given day and the sport’s inherent social quality.

“People literally just show up to courts and just join matches and play and make friends,” she said. “It’s just really nice.”

It’s a stark contrast to the tennis world in which she grew up, which is often very insular and exclusive and doesn’t necessarily breed camaraderie among top young players or those in the professional ranks. Still, she said she loves the game and, despite a string of injuries, lackluster results and a 2021 shoulder surgery that sidelined her for nearly a year and a half, is simply not ready to walk away. She played sparingly in 2023, often needing wild cards or to come through qualifying for WTA events, and is currently ranked No. 293. She last played a tour-level tournament at the Guadalajara Open in September, reaching the second round.

Her year on the tennis court ended on a positive note, however, as a member of Team Canada at the Billie Jean King Cup in November. Playing doubles, Bouchard helped Canada win its first title at the event — and it was a reminder of just how far the sport has come in her home country since she began playing.

“It was so special,” said Bouchard, who was the first Canadian to reach a major singles final and the first to reach the top five in singles rankings. “When I was a kid, it was so weird for people to hear that people played tennis in Canada and that I was a tennis player from Montreal. But now we have top amazing players, men and women, and are winning these events. It’s totally normal to want to play tennis in Canada now. And so I’d like to say I broke some barriers and was part of this change. It makes me so happy and it’s such an honor that I don’t take lightly.”

Bouchard said she hopes to make her 2024 tennis debut in February but is unsure at which event. Her PPA contract requires her to play the four “Slams” — starting with the current Palm Springs tournament — and a number of other lower-level events, some of which she can choose based on her own preferences, and she will build her tennis schedule around that. In her words, “Nothing is set in stone.”

For now, Bouchard is just focused on her first matches Wednesday. Only once she has the first pickleball tournament out of the way will she allow herself to think beyond it.

“I have zero expectations at this point,” Bouchard said. “I want to get my bearings. I want to just not embarrass myself, maybe that’s a good goal, and just get the hang of things on court and off. I want to have fun, try my best and really just not be too hard on myself.”