Eugenie Bouchard reaches Wimbledon final
1st Canadian women's singles player in Grand Slam title match
Eugenie Bouchard has become the first Canadian women's singles tennis player to reach a Grand Slam final after defeating Romania's Simona Halep at Wimbledon on Thursday.
Bouchard, the No. 13 seed from the Montreal area, upset the third-seeded Halep 7-6 (5), 6-2 on the grass at the All England Club.
Bouchard will face Petra Kvitova for the title. The sixth-seeded Czech defeated No. 23 Lucie Safarova in the other semifinal earlier.
Kvitova, a powerful lefty, won Wimbledon in 2011. She defeated Bouchard in straight sets in Toronto last year.
"I'm just gonna go for it," said Bouchard, who reached the semis of the Australian and French Opens this season. "I'll have probably my toughest match yet."
Halep showed toughness in the semifinal by playing through an apparent ankle injury. The Romanian rolled her left ankle while chasing down a ball on the final point of the fourth game of the match. She took a medical timeout and had the ankle wrapped but did not appear overly affected by the injury once play resumed.
Milos Raonic will look to follow Bouchard's lead when he faces seven-time Wimbledon champion Roger Federer in the men's semifinals on Friday.
Raonic and Bouchard are the first Canadian singles players in the Open era to reach the Wimbledon semis.
Greg Rusedski is the only other Canadian-born player to reach a Grand Slam singles final, but he had decided to compete for Great Britain before he made it to the 1997 U.S. Open final.
Canada has two other players still alive in the doubles draws. Toronto's Daniel Nestor and his mixed doubles teammate Kristina Mladenovic of France are in the semifinals, while Vancouver's Vasek Pospisil and his American teammate Jack Sock are in the men's doubles semis.
Tennis scoring for dummies
Love is generally a good thing, unless you're playing tennis. In tennis, "Love" is zero, and zero, as in any sports score, is bad.
The object of tennis is to win points, then games, then sets, then the match. Players alternate games between serving and returning serve. You serve to your opponent and win? Nice one! That's 15-Love for you, not 1-0. Serve and win again? 30-Love. Again? 40-Love, then one more, and that's Game. If you're tied at 40-40, that's called "Deuce." It just is.
Whoever wins the next point has the advantage, so if you're serving and you're ahead, it's "Ad In," and if you're returning and up a point, it's "Ad Out." If you have the advantage and win the point, you win the game. But if you lose the point, it's back to Deuce, my sneakered friend.
A player who is the first to win six games wins the set, unless it's tied at 6-6, which happens a lot and forces a tie-break. In tie-breaks, the player first to win seven points with two points more than his opponent wins the tie-break — and the set.
In major professional tournaments such as Wimbledon, known as "Grand Slams" on the tour, men play up to five sets in a match, and the first player to win three sets wins. The women play up to three sets, with the first to win two sets being the winner. If it's tied 6-6 at the end of the last set, then get ready for the long haul, as the winner is determined not by a tie-break, but by whoever next wins two consecutive games.
See? It's simple. Now you're ready for this weekend's final. Go Genie Go!