Champion or Contender, What Motivates A Tennis Great?

A lifetime of experiences changes you. The view for the person on the mountaintop is different from that of the person down below, looking up. Yet somehow, something about human nature can leave both people with the same issues, the same incentives, the same fears.

Rafael Nadal and Eugenie Bouchard span that mountain, standing at opposite ends. Nadal is 29, has won 14 Grand Slams and might be the greatest player of all time. Bouchard is 21 and has been on the cusp of greatness, having reached the Wimbledon final last year. She was recently named by London's SportsPro magazine as the world's most marketable athlete.

Yet Nadal and Bouchard head into this year's Wimbledon as the talk of the men's and women's tours because of their issues, incentives, fears. These are actually the human sides of champions. They are the vulnerabilities to greatness that we don't usually get to see.

"Accept that there is another player who was playing better than me in that moment,'' Nadal told reporters recently, talking about how he dealt with losing to Novak Djokovic in the quarter-finals of the French Open, the tournament he has basically owned for a decade. "And for me, life continues and [my] career continues.

"Mentally, I feel strong. I have the motivation to be back to my best. After what happened in Roland Garros, I have the chance to win the title the week after (he won in Stuttgart). [This] is very good news for me, no?''

Nadal has struggled with confidence a little this year, after coming back from another injury, or set of injuries. Knee. Back. He has dropped to No. 10 in the world rankings, and some analysts have questioned whether a career-fighter can live with that.

Will his incentive disappear now, when he has already accomplished everything possible?

Here is the short answer: no, it won't. And it gives such a good look into his motivation, which he says isn't so much to continue winning Slams – "I have won enough in my career. 14 is enough'' – as it is to play his best tennis.

That sounds so simple, but he's prioritising playing the sport to the highest level over the trophies that come with it.

Of course, that is a little easier for the player who already has 14 Grand Slam titles than it is for the one who hasn't broken through yet.

This time last year, Bouchard was everyone's pick as the next big thing. And while she reached the quarter-finals of the Australian Open this year, she has dropped to No. 12 in the rankings, and has struggled a little since January.

So many things have come to her so quickly. We saw it get to Petra Kvitova after she won Wimbledon, and we saw it maybe even wipe out the career of Melanie Oudin after her run from nowhere to the quarter-finals of the U.S. Open.

Neither woman was ready to handle all that came with sudden success, especially in today's world of big money and big attention from social media. That's what Bouchard is facing up to now.

"Yeah, I have definitely felt a change in the past year or so, a lot more outside attention and pressure and expectations,'' she said in March after her first-round win at Indian Wells. "So you know, I kind of hear it vaguely in the background. But I really try to not focus on it and focus on the pressure I put on myself, because that's more than enough already.''

Bouchard split with long-time coach Nick Saviano in November. It was a curious move after she was named the tour's Newcomer of the Year in 2013 and Most Improved Player in 2014 after reaching not only the Wimbledon final, but also the semi-finals of the French and Australian Opens. She climbed to No. 5 in the rankings, too.

But things turned for her after that Wimbledon final, when Kvitova beat her handily. Kvitova outmuscled Bouchard, who is a power player. Bouchard seemed to hit a ceiling after that, and her game was in need of some variety. It needed a Plan B, as John McEnroe said.

Bouchard's new coach, Sam Sumyk, has been highly successful, having led Victoria Azarenka to two major titles and the No. 1 ranking.

On an ESPN/Wimbledon conference call with media last week, Chris Evert said she was trying to figure out Bouchard's current situation.

"There's only one (gear) for her, that's to be aggressive, to be arrogant out there and to believe like she's the best. We heard from her press conferences that tone all last year. She doesn't have that same confidence… She can still get it back. We're so quick to build up our stars and then talk them down. She hasn't had a good six months. It's not like she hasn't had a good two years. This is just six months.''

Bouchard has had a few first-round losses this year, but she had some of those last year, too. She proved to be inconsistent in the non-Slams last year, as big hitters can be. But when you rely on the timing it takes to crush the ball, and your confidence drops just a little, that can be tough to get past.

Just a few weeks ago, Nadal was talking about his own lack of confidence. He and Bouchard will both get through it.

One has accomplished everything in tennis and one is on the verge. The bumps in the road start at the very beginning, but they go all the way to the top of the mountain.