EUGENIE Bouchard will step up her bid to re-enter the tennis elite in January when she plays the Brisbane International for the first time.
Bouchard, a former top-five player ranked No.46 after a testing past 15 months, announced on Tuesday she had heard a lot about the tournament, which will run from January 1-8, and was eager to play in Australia again.
Bouchard became one of the most watched female tennis players, especially on social media, off the back of earning her tennis stripes in a breakthrough 2014 Grand Slam season, in which she was runner-up at Wimbledon.
The Florida-based right-hander’s career trajectory went off course in 2015 after an Australian Open quarter-final appearance and she lost in the first round in seven tournaments before slipping and suffering a concussion at the US Open in September, 2015.
“It’s a good result for the tournament - she’s a popular player,’’ Brisbane International tournament director Geoff Quinlan said.
Bouchard, 22, joins a women’s field at the Queensland Tennis Centre headed by world No.1 Angelique Kerber, French Open winner Garbine Muguruza and Aussie No.1 Sam Stosur.
Bouchard is taking a different path to the Australian Open, having started 2016 in Shenzhen, China and backing up her quarter-final finish in China with a runner-up run at Hobart the following week.
Bouchard plays well in Australian conditions, having made the 2014 Melbourne Park semi-finals before her quarter-final run in 2015.
Her second-round loss at the Australian Open in January was to fourth-ranked Agnieszka Radwanska, the sort of match-up which would not befall her if she improves her ranking towards her former heights.
She will be unseeded again at the Australian Open in the summer and also be a dangerous floater at the Brisbane International.
Bouchard’s win-loss record for 2016 is 31-24, well below the consistency of a player who pipped Milos Raonic to the mantle of being the first Canadian to reach a Grand Slam final with her run to the championship match at Wimbledon two years ago.
Bouchard has 919,300 Twitter followers and is active on Facebook and other social media, making her Brisbane International entry an important one for the event’s global demographic.
Last month, she and a friend posted a picture of them impersonating a well known image of Kim Kardashian and the reaction that followed summed up how tennis players can effectively augment their on-court achievements with imagination and humour with their social media offerings.
