Serena Williams through at Rogers Cup, Eugenie Bouchard out

“The thing is I was very fortunate that I did achieve my dream of being No. 1 and I won a Grand Slam at the same time”, Ivanovic said.

Bencic, an 18-year-old from Wollerau, Switzerland, got her second career win over Bouchard with the original Swiss Miss, Martina Hingis, looking on courtside.

The Bouchard who showed up in the opening set against Bencic was the one who has become all-too familiar to fans in 2015.

The 18-year-old from Montreal (where have we heard that before?), one of the top-ranked players in the world when she was a junior, turned some heads when she knocked off Irina-Camelia Begu during Canada’s Fed Cup tie against Romania in April. In the third game after denying Bouchard a game point, she’d need two chances to convert and then only needed one in Bouchard’s final service game before holding for the bagel. Bencic reeled off six straight games to win the first set 6-0 in just 24 minutes. I think it’s important to go back to her basics and what works for her and to work hard and actually listen to herself. “Haven’t had a lot of match play recently, but I was able to raise my game, and I think it was pretty competitive out there after that first set”. “I was in a completely different situation last year compared to this year”.

On the same night Milos Raonic lost to Ivo Karlovic on the men’s side in Montreal, Bouchard’s exit meant there are no Canadians left in women’s singles play. “I was getting into the spiral of thinking, ‘Why did this happen to me, why not anybody else?’ Once I got over that part, once I started to leave the past in the past, it was much easier for me to build momentum and gain self-confidence, and then it was easier for me to be secure on court”. Plus they wouldn’t allow me to play small tournament in this half of the year, which is insane.

Amid that turmoil she dealt with injuries, including the abdominal strain that forced her to retire in her only previous meeting with Bencic, a round-of-16 match at a Wimbledon tuneup tournament in June. Bencic went up 5-3 with the chance of upsetting Bouchard on home soil, but the Canadian wouldn’t go down this early in the tournament. In the end, the storybook comeback was not to be.

Austin said the good news for the now-25th-ranked Bouchard was that Tuesday’s three-set loss to Bencic kept her on the court long enough to establish some improvement.

Tuesday’s loss was Bouchard’s 13th in her past 15 matches overall. Bouchard said she was working with Marko Dragic on a short-term basis for the Rogers Cup. The 20th-ranked player in the world praised Bouchard for how she responded in the second set. A few years later, after suffering some injuries and sitting out a few months, she can remember periods when her confidence and control on court were missing.

It was a tough day for Canadians on the tennis court at the Rogers Cup yesterday.

In other early matches, second-seeded Simona Halep of Romania downed Serbia’s Jelena Jankovic, 6-3, 6-4, and Alize Cornet of France beat Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia, 6-3, 6-2.

Vernon, B.C., native Pospisil will try to keep his Rogers Cup going in the second round against American John Isner, the 16th seed who survived a 6-4, 6-7 (6), 6-3 encounter with Benjamin Becker.