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…
