The abilities of a former world number 5 tennis player, still relatively young (30 years old) and in good physical shape, should transfer well to the pickleball court.
But according to Genie Bouchard, it might have been better if she had no tennis experience before entering her new world of professional pickleball.
“For 25 years I was taught that a short, soft ball was no good,” she says. “Suddenly you come to pickleball and this is the shot you want to master. This was the biggest shock for me.
The Montreal native, who has lived in Miami for 10 years, finishes her first full year of professional stripping with this week’s Daytona Beach Open, Thursday through Sunday. in Pictona in Holly Hill. She will compete in all three professional divisions: singles, doubles (with Layne Sleeth) and mixed doubles (with Mota Alhouni).
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Bouchard will look to finish 2024 on a high note and, in singles at least, stand out from the water on the stat line throughout the season. She is 15-17 in singles this year and 7-17 in both forms of doubles. In the PPA Tour rankings, she is 19th in singles, 35th in mixed doubles and 45th in doubles.
While such numbers may seem rather modest for a former Wimbledon finalist, there is some perspective.
“I was 0-9 in my first three tournaments,” Bouchard said by phone last week. “Finally, my first match victory took place in April. “Before I really knew it, I thought that coming from tennis, I would be good right away. That certainly wasn’t the case.
Ten years ago, Bouchard was a budding tennis superstar
So far, a small handful of former world-ranked tennis players have moved on to professional pickleball — among them Jack Sock, Sam Querrey and Tina Pisnik.
“But most professional pickleball players have some sort of tennis background,” Bouchard says.
However, none of them have ever been ranked fifth in the world singles rankings. Bouchard arrived there in 2014, the year she reached the semi-finals of the first two major tournaments of the year (Australian and French Open) and the final of the next one, Wimbledon, where she lost this final. against Petra Kvitova.
She remained a fixture in the majors for another five years before crises and injuries left her a part-time player on the professional circuit, although a modeling shoot for the 2017 edition of Sports Swimsuit Illustrated allowed him to maintain great visibility. She has competed in a few events this year and hopes to do so again in 2025 between PPA Tour stints.
“I love tennis. It’s what I love the most, what I’ve been doing since I was 5,” she says. “It’s something I didn’t want to give up yet. Every time I go back to tennis I love the feeling of hitting and I enjoy it so much.
Tennis allows him to stick to what is familiar: roaming the baseline and unleashing hard forehands and backhands, waiting for the opponent’s weak groundstroke to give him a chance to pounce. In other words, a near reversal of pickleball strategy.
“I know I have great athleticism, I know I have great hand-eye coordination,” Bouchard says. “And so everyone around me, including myself, said it’s just a matter of time, you just have to put in the hours.”
She visited the PPA headquarters in Dallas and trained with various instructors, learning more about life in the midfield kitchen queues, where mastery of the all-important dink shot brings great advantage .
“I know I can figure things out. I learn quickly,” she says. “It’s not that far from tennis that I’m completely out of my league. It was a little difficult at first, but we knew I could do it.
Adjust expectations
Bouchard picked up a pickleball paddle for the first time in 2021, at a friend’s house in Miami.
“It was a tennis court. but we put tape on to make the pickleball lines,” she says. “We played for fun on a day off. I was like, “Okay, that’s fun, but I like tennis more and I’m better at tennis.” » It also scared me that it might ruin my tennis, so I made it a point not to play too much. The technique is quite different.
Over time, she started playing more and more and decided in 2023 to start playing professional tournaments and prepare for the full 2024 PPA season.
She may have prepared, but she wasn’t completely prepared.
“I just didn’t realize how good the professionals were on the pro circuit,” she says. “I said to myself, ‘This is a real professional league here, this is no joke.’ “I quickly had to train as much as possible, participate in as many tournaments and matches, learn as I went and try to catch up.
“I had higher expectations, but as soon as I played in my first tournament and saw how good everyone was, my expectations fell on the field. It’s the touch game, the dinks, the kitchen line game, all that I didn’t do. So for me, I quickly understood that they are really great players, real professionals. I knew it would be difficult.
Yes, physically easier than tennis, but now try simple
Pickleball’s rapid growth in recent years isn’t just about poaching tennis players who seek a smaller court and reduced physical challenge. Many members of the neighborhood court base have little or no tennis experience.
But many do. They quickly learn that doubles pickleball – and the vast majority of the game is doubles – is sort of like playing on a giant ping pong table instead of a scaled-down tennis court.
“You also have a similar sized paddle and a plastic ball,” says Bouchard.
Indoors or during the non-summer months, you can play a game or two before getting really sweaty.
But singles pickleball… it’s a whole different game and, Bouchard learned, a whole other physical challenge.
“Pickleball is physically easier than tennis, but if you play singles, it’s difficult,” she says. “Yes, you have a smaller court, but you have a shorter racket and you have a ball that doesn’t bounce towards you, it stays there and you have to go. We need to move more. I try to explain this to people.
“This year in Las Vegas I played four singles matches in one day and I was dead. “We never do that in tennis. Pickleball games are shorter, sure, but you leave the court and soon you have to get back on it, and I quickly realized that “it’s not easy.”
Daytona Beach Open Tournament Details
What: PPA Tour event offering professional gaming but also an amateur tournament bringing together more than 1,000 players.
Or: Pictona at Holly Hill.
When: Amateur play begins Wednesday, the professional tournament runs Thursday through Sunday.
Pro format: Thursday singles; Friday mixed doubles; Double Saturday; Sunday finals.
More information: PPAtour.com or Pictona.org.
This article originally appeared in the Daytona Beach News-Journal: WTA star Genie Bouchard completes first year of professional pickleball this week
