Eugenie Bouchard couldn’t take the heat of Flushing.
The burgeoning blonde melted in the humidity of Flushing Meadows and under the weight of recent expectations. Complaining afterward of dizziness and blurry vision while on the court, the seventh-seeded Bouchard was upset in the fourth round to powerful lefty, 17th-seeded Ekaternia Makarova, 7-6 (7-2), 6-4 at Louis Armstrong Stadium.
The woozy Bouchard, despite her rousing performances in Grand Slams this year, saw her recent slump continue and she left the court with moist eyes. A finalist at Wimbledon, the 20-year-old suffered early-round losses in Open tuneups in her hometown Montreal, Cincinnati and New Haven.
Bouchard needed a medical timeout in the second set during which a trainer took her blood pressure and iced her down. Bouchard said she felt “lightheaded’’ because of the conditions and didn’t recover enough from her prior two matches.
“The heat got to me,’’ said Bouchard, who spent more than two hours with doctors and trainers before meeting with the press. “I was feeling very lightheaded and dizzy on the court. You know, just seeing things a little blurry. You know, feeling well physically on the court is very important to me, so when I don’t feel that — I just generally didn’t feel good.’’
Bouchard also appeared to frequent touch her right thigh, wincing, in the final games. Though Makarova has now made the Open quarterfinals two straight years, Bouchard didn’t praise her opponent from Russia, speaking just of her own wooziness. Marakova closed the match by breaking Bouchard’s serve during which she crushed two punishing forehands down the line for winners.
The buzz for Bouchard has grown across the year as she became the lone women’s player to advance to at least the semifinals of the year’s first three Grand Slams. But now she acknowledged the pressure is on and it appears she’s physically and mentally not handling everything well. Her beauty — and tennis — has landed her on a handful of magazine covers and a Vogue fashion shoot.
“They changed a lot,’’ Bouchard said of the expectations. “It felt more like it’s normal if I win and it’s a bit more of a disaster when I lose. But that’s something that I need to block out.’’
Bouchard said she started feeling the effects of the Flushing sweatbox in the middle of the first set and got walloped in the tiebreaker. Even as the Russian piled it on in the second set, Bouchard never thought of quitting.
“No, I never want to retire from matches no matter what,’’ she said. “I was going to play on for sure.’’
The losses in the Open tune-ups had given Bouchard a bad feeling entering the Open.
“I didn’t have the highest expectations from myself for this tournament,’’ she said. “Since Wimbledon it’s been a little bit of a struggle with nagging injuries. Even at the beginning of this tournament I said, I know I haven’t had the proper preparation. I have really cut down on practice time. That affects you in a match, especially after a few tough ones late at night.’’
The women’s game this year continues to puzzle. It is assured of four different Grand Slam winners and a whole slate of different quarterfinalists. Parity has smacked the women’s game.
“I think now it’s everyone is here that we’re kind of the same, yeah?,’’ Makarova said.