Pickleball Pro Bouchard Awarded Wild Card For 2024 Canadian Open

Sunday, 28 July 2024 at 02:48

byErik Virostko

Eugenie Bouchard may have become a pickleball professional, but she still competes in a WTA tournament when she gets a chance to.

In September of 2023, Bouchard committed to playing pickleball professionally in 2024, which essentially meant that she would be forced to miss the vast majority of the calendar.

In the meantime, she has already recorded her first-ever pickleball win and continued to play professional pickleball tournaments, but she has already played also one tennis tournament in 2024, and she will play at least one more.

The Canadian admitted earlier this year that 2024 would serve as an 'exploratory year' for her, as she needs to find out whether she wants to commit to pickleball full-time, or if she wants to come back to tennis in the future.

Still, she played a W75 tournament on clay in Zephyrhills, Florida, in the United States, where she won two matches to reach the quarter-finals, before being forced to retire in the quarter-final match.

Now, she has added another tournament to her calendar, the 2024 Canadian Open in Toronto, which is a WTA 1000 tournament, running from August 6th to 12th.

However, if she wants to compete at Sobeys Stadium in that period, she will first need to fight her way through the qualifying on August 4th and 5th, as she received a wild card for the qualifying.

The 30-year-old was among three recipients of a qualifying wild card, with compatriots Katherine Sebov and Carson Branstine being the other two recipients of a wild card for the qualifying.

There is one more qualifying wild card to be awarded, but that one will be given to the winner of the pre-qualifying tournament, which will be played from Tuesday, July 30th to Friday, August 2nd.

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The tournament organizers also announced three main-draw wild cards. One of the main draw wild card recipients for the 2024 Canadian Open was Naomi Osaka.

Alongside the former World No. 1, two more Canadian players, Rebecca Marino and Marina Stakusic, were awarded a main draw wild card for the tournament, also known as the National Bank Open, because of the sponsorship reasons.

Giving two main-draw wild cards to home players and three more in the qualifying will certainly make the home crowd happy, as the tournament director, Karl Hale, was delighted about the field that he was able to bring to Toronto this year.

"We already had a show-stopping player field for this year’s National Bank Open presented by Rogers, and it just got even more exciting with the additions of Rebecca [Marino], Marina [Stakusic] and Naomi [Osaka]."

"We couldn’t be happier to provide this opportunity to two well-deserving Canadians who we know fans will be excited to see in action at Sobeys Stadium. And, to welcome a player of Naomi’s quality and star power back to Toronto is going to be a real treat for everyone."

Since the tournament runs immediately after the Olympic Games in Paris, it's probable that the tournament will be marked by many withdrawals, which may impact also the wild card distribution.