Eugenie Bouchard continued to plot baby steps towards salvation as she curved past Shuai Peng 6-2 6-2 to set up a second-round meeting with Serena Williams in Melbourne.

On an uncomfortably humid day, the 24-year-old Canadian produced a dominant performance, as she brushed aside the Chinese veteran in a battle between two former top 20 players.

“I'm really enjoying it on the court, and I feel like I have done some good improvements in the last couple months,” said Bouchard. “I have been very solid in my matches last few tournaments. Just enjoying the training and enjoying the matches. That's the most important thing, because I have definitely had moments where I didn't enjoy it so much. So I have really loved being out there.”

After starting the 2018 grass season outside of the top 190, Bouchard’s progress has been slow and incremental yet clear. Throughout the second half of 2018, she steadily crept back up the rankings, amassing WTA semi-finals in Gastaad and Luxembourg and second-round finishes from qualifying at both Wimbledon and the US Open.

Towards the end of the season, the former Wimbledon finalist enlisted the services of Michael Joyce, former coach of Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka, and in 2019 they have continued her form at the turn of the year, moving into the Auckland quarterfinal before her emphatic victory against the former Chinese number one.

“I have had tough moments in the past year, for sure, tough injuries,” she said, sighing. “When you lose early, it's less fun, of course, but when I feel like I'm improving and, you know, you feel like specific things that you're taking a step in the right direction, you can feel concrete improvements, I think that's really motivating.

“I try to apply what I'm doing in practice in the matches. And I love my team, I love the people around me, so it makes the grind of the tour less tough and a little more enjoyable.”

Much of Bouchard’s success centered around a tinkered service motion that consumed much of her off-season. Her altered delivery landed her 46% unreturned serves throughout the match and scaled as high as 116 miles per hour, winning her 76% of first serve points.

“One thing I worked on was having a lower toss,” she explained. “Because my toss would throw off my timing, and of course in conditions like wind and stuff, it's definitely trickier. So that's something I have been working on since I started working with Mike.

Awaiting Bouchard in the second round will be Serena Williams, who flitted past Tatjana Maria, her neighbor in Florida, 6-0 6-2.

“I think she's the greatest ever,” said Bouchard. “So it's just so cool that I'll be able to share the court with her and an opportunity to see how I compare to one of the best players. Her ranking is top 20 right now, but to me she's always basically No. 1. I mean, I admire obviously the longevity of her career, her dominance over such a long amount of time, how she's come back so many times from injury, pregnancy, et cetera.”

And then she chuckled. “I don't want to talk about it too much and put her on too much of a pedestal because I have to play her in two days, but I love her.”

(Photo | AP)