Eugenie Bouchard devises an interesting plan to maintain a professional pickleball and tennis career

Eugenie Bouchard may not be playing much tennis these days, but she confirmed to Caroline Garcia on the Frenchwoman’s podcast that she never intended to leave the game completely, although balancing between two professional sports is not an easy task.

When it was announced last September that the 2014 Wimbledon finalist would turn professional in pickleball, the general view was that this also marked the end of her tennis career. But to everyone’s surprise, the Canadian did not want to end that chapter, but simply chose to play both sports.

After making her professional pickleball debut in January and competing in a few other tournaments, Bouchard played her first tennis tournament of the year in May, reaching the quarterfinals at an ITF event. Since then, she also competed in front of her home fans in Toronto, where she lost in the first round of qualifying in August.

Regarding her future, the 30-year-old hinted that she plans to select periods of the year where she will focus on pickleball and others where she will compete on the WTA Tour.

Bouchard: I play both sports, but I don’t like going back and forth…

“It’s hard to make a transition between the two, so I’ve been playing tennis twice in a row, now I’m doing a few pickles in a row. I kind of like groups because going back and forth is so hard and I’m I would rather not change too often during the year (I want to continue to practice both sports professionally), we will see how long this lasts, because I have a lot on my plate,” said the former WTA world champion. No. 5 explained to Garcia on the Tennis Insider Club.

In the same podcast, Bouchard also noted that she does some off-court stuff — including tennis commentary — that sometimes makes her feel like she has “four jobs” and just needs to skip something.