Some tennis players sneak up on you. Not the ones that have a lot of advertising behind them or that were announced with a lot of fuss. Marie Bouzková is the other type. She’s the type that makes you look up one afternoon and realize you missed seeing her get really, really good.
She got going early. The racket found her before she could really choose it herself because her family played tennis. She was already on the court when other kids her age in Prague were still trying to figure out what sport they liked. That head start showed by the time she was a teenager.
2014 was the year when people really started to pay attention. She won the US Open junior draw when she was 16 years old. She went from being ranked 1195th in the WTA to 468th almost overnight after that kind of win. Then, Petra Kvitová, who is one of the most famous tennis players in Czech, sent her a message of congratulations. Bouzková said she was surprised Kvitová knew who she was. This is the kind of small thing that sticks with you.
During that stretch, Jiří Novák coached her. He used to be a top-10 player and, according to her, is a great person as well as a tennis brain. Not every teen player gets to play in that kind of setting. If she got serious coaching early on, it may have helped her development keep going, which can happen to talented juniors all too often.
In 2019, the tennis world was reminded once more that Bouzková doesn’t really say anything before she shows up. As a qualifier, she played in a WTA Premier event and beat Sloane Stephens, Jelena Ostapenko, and Simona Halep, all three Grand Slam champions, without dropping a set. When you see that kind of run, you almost feel like the scoreboard isn’t telling the truth. This is not what qualifiers are supposed to do. She did it anyway.
The water bottle is one of the truly strange things about her. The over-sized dress she wears everyplace with her dates back to when she was a pre-teen training at the Bollettieri Academy in Florida. She bought it from an unknown girl who was practicing there. It’s still courtside at every game after more than ten years. It may seem like a small thing, but small habits can really reveal a lot about a person. Such as, she is someone who sticks with what works.
In a somewhat unusual move, she is also getting an online degree from Indiana University East while competing professionally. At a point in their career when most players are focused only on the circuit, Bouzková chose to keep going to school. That takes a level of discipline that doesn’t show up in her ranking but certainly affects how she deals with stress on the court.
Her favorite surface is hard, and her favorite tournament is the US Open, which makes sense since she has played there before. New York is her favorite city. She stays simple when she’s not playing basketball. She spends time with family, friends, and studying. There is no made-up persona here. Based on what we know about her, she seems like someone who knows who she is.
In 2019, she was ranked in the top 100 for the first time. Her run to the semifinals pushed her up to the top 60. Still, it’s not clear how high her ceiling is. But the fact that she beat three champions in a week, won the junior title, and set an ITF record shows that the number will keep going up.
