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After Wimbledon | Ladies

The scary Canadian tennis player Eugenie Bouchard hasn't managed to inspire any warm feelings in me in the couple of years since her star began to rise. She is aggressive and antique portrait bust pretty, very Gilded Age; other fans of Edith Wharton might have noted her exact-in-many-points resemblance to Undine Spragg. Yesterday at Wimbledon she played and was flattened 6-3 6-0 in the Ladies Single final. Even though I am a major Petra Kvitova fan, here was my chance to loosen the heartstrings and sympathize with the kid a little; I didn't, I enjoyed watching North American princess type Eugenie Bouchard get thumped and sent packing in less than an hour by "my" player. Very much!

 

Petra Wins Again

But ever since, when I think about what she was up against, thinking back on that match, I've felt more and more sorry for Genie Bouchard. In my mind's eye I can picture her, a pretty blonde girl with visor, braid, racquet, white multi-million dollar Nike contract tennis dress, the works--she's on one side of the net. And on the other side, I know, is Petra Kvitova, I've watched the match twice (on-line, via ESPN embedded on the Wimbledon site all the way through the finals, all courts, with replay, very civilized and great despite buffering problems). And I see Petra Kvitova; she just hit a crosscourt forehand. At the same time a spirit photography-style double exposure occurs in my memory and hovering all around her I see white brick walls and parts of industrial structures--concrete loading docks, power plant smokestacks, thick steel beams with rivets for their alien double spines. As I recall, I see poor Genie Bouchard with no weapons but a strong chin versus some kind of dark Satanic Mill, a human female mega-factory for the production of another Wimbledon title.