Eugenie Bouchard shares her journey of embracing social media amidst hate

Canadian tennis player Eugenie Bouchard has opened up about getting hate on social media a few years back. The 30-year-old, once regarded as the next big thing, has remained largely inactive in professional tennis despite not officially announcing retirement.

Bouchard was recently quoted in a report where she talked about how she received hate for posting different things on social media. The Montreal-born highlighted how things have changed on social media in the last few years. She stated that six years back, she received hate for posting normal activities outside the tennis court, which is not the case anymore.

“Back in the day, I could train six hours during the day before later posting on social media about being at the movies and I would get hate,” she said. “It was like, well, social media isn’t an exact representation of my day. It’s great that the world has changed over the past ten years and now not only is it acceptable to do off-court things, it’s actually encouraged. Back in the day, I felt like I was being shoved into a box, like you can’t do anything besides tennis.”

Bouchard, who was once ranked world number five in women’s tennis in the singles category, became probably the most high-profile player to announce that she would play Pickleball simultaneously with tennis.

Bouchard impressively started her career when she played two semifinals and a final of a Grand Slam in 12 months. However, since then, she has failed to produce similar kinds of performances and, therefore, has struggled throughout her career. In 2014, Bouchard had the best outing of her career when she finished as the runner-up at Wimbledon after losing to the Czech Republic’s Petra Kvitova with a score of 6-3, 6-0. Since then, she has only managed to play in the quarterfinal of a mega-event once in 21 attempts.