In sports, athletes are always measuring themselves against the competition. The ones on top are monitoring anyone who's closing in on them, whose game is evolving into a threat. The ones chasing look for signs they are narrowing the skill gap between themselves and those inhabiting the top ranks in their sport.
On Monday at the Rio Olympics, Canada's Eugenie Bouchard had an opportunity to see how far she still needs to go to become one of her sport's top players. Facing the second-ranked player in the world, Germany's Angelique Kerber, Bouchard fell 6-4, 6-2 in a match that exposed inconsistencies in her game. At times the talent spread looked like a yawning chasm that could never be bridged; at other moments, the difference in the two players' games seemed inches apart.
Afterward, Bouchard, not surprisingly, preferred the second assessment. That has to be an athlete's default position. Suggesting anything else is admitting that you don't have the stuff to play with the best; that you are resigned to the mushy middle of your sport with dozens of others. The moment an athlete accepts that, the harrowing descent begins and she has one foot in the world the rest of us inhabit, as chilling a thought an athlete can have.
"I don't think far at all," Bouchard said afterwards when asked if she thought her game was a lot behind that of her competitor. "I think the difference is so small between the top players and the rest of the pack. It's just a little – 1 per cent, 2 per cent here and there – that makes the difference."
She is probably right. But 1 per cent or 2 per cent sounds smaller than it really is. And this match provided a good example of that.
Bouchard jumped out to an early lead, breaking Kerber in the fourth game, and then winning the next to go up 4-1. Bouchard had a 40-love lead in the sixth game but allowed Kerber to reel off five straight points to win. That was an important junction in the match: Kerber promptly broke Bouchard's serve to make it 4-3, and Bouchard didn't win another game in the set, often sending shots long or into the net. A couple of times Bouchard had Kerber dead but made tactically poor decisions, allowing the German to counter-punch and put the Canadian on the defensive.
Kerber is a powerfully built German athletic machine. Bouchard is a much sleeker model, with nowhere near the horsepower. A slow court with loads of room behind the baseline also gave Kerber an advantage – she likes to stay in points, grind her opponents down, often finishing them off with devastating cross-court lasers.
The second set was worse for Bouchard. Kerber broke her in the first game. The Canadian continued to make poor decisions with her ball placement, allowing Kerber to stay in points that she would eventually win. Midway through the set, you could see a seasoned pro (Kerber is 28), keenly aware of the extent to which the game is played on the margins, dismantling a 22-year-old who is, in many respects, still learning the game.
Near the end of the match, Bouchard began to play better. She started painting the lines, maybe because she had nothing to lose. One game went to deuce eight times, with Bouchard showing admirable fight and spirit and ultimately prevailing in the game. It would have been easy at that point to allow the inevitability of the match to take its course. She refused.
One or 2 per cent, Bouchard said. That differential was even greater in the postgame numbers. Bouchard made 36 unforced errors to Kerber's 19. First-serve percentage? Fifty-seven for Bouchard; 73 for Kerber. There wasn't a statistical category the German didn't own.
Despite her second-round exit, these Olympics are not a complete loss for Bouchard, not by a long stretch. (She is still alive in doubles). Her game demonstrated flashes of brilliance she can build on. She showed up here when other athletes, including Milos Raonic, bailed. She insisted on marching in the opening ceremony when she could have taken a pass because she was playing the next day.
Someone who is often cast as selfish and just a little too in love with herself looked good in Canada's colours, looked good being part of a team. Her image needed this.
"It's an experience I'll remember for the rest of my life," she said about competing in the Games. And no doubt she will.
Gary Mason