It seems like only yesterday Eugenie Bouchard took the tennis world by storm.
After winning the junior Wimbledon title in 2012, Bouchard announced herself by stunning former world number one Ana Ivanovic on centre court in the second round of senior Wimbledon in 2013.
It was the start of a rapid surge up the rankings – she finished the year ranked 32nd, a rise of more than 100 positions in 12 months.
As a result, Bouchard was named the WTA’s Newcomer of the Year for 2013.
Her year-end ranking was enough for her to be seeded for the 2014 Australian Open, where she defeated Ivanovic again, this time in the quarter-finals, before losing to eventual champion Li Na.
She continued up the rankings, first into the top 20, and then into the top ten, after winning her first career title in Nuremberg, reaching the semi-finals at the French Open, and advancing to the final at Wimbledon, where she lost to Petra Kvitova.
A run to the fourth round at the US Open was followed by a run to the final in Wuhan, where Kvitova again proved too good for the Canadian. She later qualified for the WTA Finals, finished seventh in the world, and was named the WTA’s Most Improved Player of 2014.
It appeared Bouchard would be a long-term top-ten player when she again went deep at the 2015 Australian Open, before Maria Sharapova was way too good for her in the quarter-finals.
But that was the start of a horrid fall from grace.
Between Indian Wells and the French Open, she lost eight of nine matches, the worst of which was a first-round loss to Kristina Mladenovic at Roland Garros. That, and then a first round loss at Wimbledon, saw her drop out of the top 20.
She then suffered a head fall inside the locker rooms at the US Open, which forced her to withdraw mid-tournament. She had been due to face Italy’s Roberta Vinci, who went on to reach the final, in the fourth round.
The Canadian could only play one match from then until the end of the year, retiring in her opening match against Andrea Petkovic in Beijing. And so, with the huge amount of rankings points lost from the previous twelve months, Bouchard finished the year ranked 49th in the world.
Bouchard started this season promisingly, reaching the quarter-finals at Shenzhen and then the final in Hobart, where she lost convincingly to Frenchwoman Alize Cornet.
However, her run to the last eight in Shenzhen was not enough for her to gain a seeding for the Australian Open.
After defeating Aleksandra Krunic in her first match, Bouchard’s run came to an abrupt end in the second round on Wednesday night, when she lost to Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska in straight sets.
Needing to defend quarter-final points from last year, the early loss means Bouchard, currently ranked 37th, will fall out of the world’s top 50 for the first time since 2013 when the rankings are updated following the conclusion of the Australian Open.
As the saying goes, ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fall’. But what matters more is whether you get up again after being knocked down. So can Bouchard rediscover the form that took her to a career-high ranking of world number five in October 2014?
It’s happened to Ana Ivanovic once before, and it’s even happened to other women’s heavyweights such as the Williams sisters, Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka.
After Ivanovic won the French Open in 2008, she appeared to have the world at her feet.
Defeating compatriot Jelena Jankovic in the semi-finals, and then Dinara Safina in the final, she became the first Serb to hold the world number one ranking, and by winning at Roland Garros emulated Novak Djokovic’s earlier success at the Australian Open, whereby he became the first Serb to win a Grand Slam title.
But she then failed to win a single title in 2009 (repeating that indignity in 2012, 2013 and last year), dropped out of the world’s top 20, and plunged to 65th by July 2010.
A run to the semi-finals at Cincinnati, where she defeated future Grand Slam champion and world number one Victoria Azarenka in the first round in three sets, marked the rebirth of her career.
Having been 12-14 for the season to that point, the then-22-year-old then went 21-6 for the rest of the year and won two titles to sneak back into the top 20.
Following three seasons of slow but steady progress, in 2014 Ivanovic won four titles, defeated Serena Williams at the Australian Open, and finished fifth in the world.
But after injuries and poor form last year, the Serb now finds herself ranked back outside the top 20. Even so, her persistence and rise back up the rankings after plummeting from the top must serve as inspiration for Bouchard.
The Canadian has to be patient, as her low ranking means she will be unseeded at most major tournaments this year, and will face some tough draws.
All hope is not lost for Bouchard, who is turning 22 next month and thus has at least another good decade left in her.
With very little rankings points to defend over the next year, the opportunities are there for Bouchard to bank some precious points and regain her place among the world’s elite.
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