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…
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