When last we took real notice of Eugenie Bouchard, she was creeping through the back door at the U.S. Open.
Sunglasses on, head bowed, hoodie pulled up, a slow, painful perp walk. Bouchard looked a bit like the Unabomber alighting for an afternoon constitutional.
On that day in September, hours after she'd slipped and smacked her head in a darkened training room, rumours were already flying that Bouchard intended to sue. It seemed too foolish an idea to contemplate.
Six weeks later, she sued. In November, speaking through her lawyer, Bouchard complained that the U.S. Tennis Association was being "really aggressive" in its own defence. For someone who spends a lot of time talking about competitive spirit, she no longer seemed to have much of one.
Every once in a while, a top athlete in his/her prime will be pulled out of orbit just as they're cracking the atmosphere. Usually, it has something to do with injury – generational-star-for-precisely-one-year Robert Griffin III and 27-year-old has-been Derrick Rose are recent examples that leap to mind. As suddenly as it can start, the fall back to Earth takes forever. Pros will fool themselves into thinking it's just a matter of more effort or more rehab. Once they begin to grasp that they're done, they get a look about them.
Bouchard had that look. After emerging in 2014, she'd broken with most of the people who'd helped her get there. She hired L.A.-based heavyweights IMG/WME to represent her. She signed a modelling deal. She lost weight she couldn't afford to lose – trading an athlete's body for an Instagram body.
As one tends to do after changing a lifetime of habits, Bouchard lost her balance. She picked up nagging injuries. She began losing in increasingly cringeworthy ways to lesser and lesser players. By mid-summer, a small turn off course was becoming a hideous speed wobble.
I know a guy who neither follows nor cares about tennis, but does love a wager. He made a small fortune last year betting Bouchard to fold up in all of her matches. At one point, while she clung to a top-10 ranking like someone hanging off a car bumper, it was close to a sure thing.
That bad run ended farcically at the U.S. Open. You wondered if Eugenie Bouchard, aged just 21, was already finished.
Cue the second act.
After months spent recovering from the side-effects of a concussion, Bouchard returned to the tour in the new year. Though it's a second-tier tournament with third-rate competition, she's reached the final of the Hobart International. She hasn't managed that since 2014. Next week, she'll appear at the year's first slam, the Australian Open.
Now ranked 47th in the world, Bouchard will have to claw her way through majors. Just to get past the second round in Melbourne, she'll have to go through world No. 4 Agnieszka Radwanska. Four months ago, you would not have given her any chance.
But while we are still watching from a distance, the 2016 iteration of Bouchard looks markedly different from the 2015 model. She appears to have gained back a good deal of muscle. She claims to be fully fit for the first time in a long time. She's changed coaches again.
She doesn't sound particularly confident yet ("I have no idea where my game is at," she told ESPN), but results create confidence. One of the great mistakes of last year was trying to work it the other way around.
A top pro and yet so young, Bouchard can fix her body. It's a tool. She just needs to recalibrate it. Perhaps she already has.
The real trick will be mental. Has Bouchard solved whatever intellectual/emotional impediment caused her to lose in straight sets to qualifier Ying-Ying Duan (ranked 118th) at Wimbledon or to win only a single game against Roberta Vinci in New Haven. Defeats that heavy have little to do with form or conditioning. They aren't losses. They're chokes.
At her best, Bouchard never showed much of a personality on the court. At her worst, she caves in on herself, puttering around absently in a fog. In terms of intangibles, her game could use a little energy boost.
After blowing the second set in the Hobart semi-final, Bouchard embarked on an epic racquet-shattering session. She looked as unhinged as we've ever seen her. After so much time spent watching Bouchard sitting vacantly at courtside as things slide into oblivion, it was a good look for her.
"I definitely want to control my emotions a little better," Bouchard said later.
I might rethink that theory. Last year should have taught Bouchard something about her instincts – they are frequently terrible. There would be worse ideas than spending the first bit of this season doing things she doesn't think are good ideas.
The Australian is Bouchard's best major. The surface suits her underpowered game. Even in the midst of her annus horribilus, she made the round of 16 there last year. This will be the only place that does not bring back awful memories of a lost year.
Bouchard is plainly trying to reinvent herself by returning to the player she once was. More so than most comebacks, it's an act of rebirth. It's Bouchard taking things back to the uncertain time when she was still a comer. It sounds like a good idea. But so do most bad ones. At first.
Give it a week. By then, we'll have some idea if this was just another stage in the fall, or whether the fall was one part of the rise.