Eugenie Bouchard takes notice on Instagram of the support she gets from her fans.

So it’s not a surprise one tried for the ultimate acknowledgment. According to WTA Insider reporter Courtney Nguyen, a fan yelled out a mid-match proposal to Bouchard on Wednesday during a tense moment in a loss to Simona Halep in the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.

“PSA: 5-4* in the tiebreak is not the time to yell ‘Genie when will you marry me? Simona said no.’ The Halep Glare was choice,” Nguyen wrote on Twitter.

Speaking after the hard-fought, 7-6 (7-4), 6-4 win, Halep said she could hear everything going on in the stands, so she was never going to miss that romantic proposal.

“I hear everything, every word,” Halep said. “Someone said they were going to miss the plane tonight and I have to finish faster. I don’t know if it’s positive for me during the match, but I took it. I lost the game, but then I won [the match].”

Bouchard can take heart from the loss, knowing she pushed a grand-slam winner to her limits as she aims to reinvent herself as a genuine threat to the best in the world after years in tennis limbo.

Halep certainly knows the Canadian is no easy beat.

“Bouchard played well,” Halep told reporters after the match. “The level was pretty good. I served very well. At some points I really ran very well. I’m confident. I feel good on court even if I’m tired. It’s always a tough one against [Bouchard] because she stays close to the baseline and takes the ball very fast. I tried just to push her back as much as possible. After, when I had the chance, I was aggressive and I finished the points.”

Halep’s class won out, but Bouchard is on the right track after a horrible couple of years saw her ranking tank. In 2014 she was the hottest young prospect in women’s tennis, making the semifinals of the Australian Open and French Open and going on a stunning run into the Wimbledon final.

But the past 18 months saw her suffer a dramatic fall from grace. The lowest point came in June, when Bouchard was close to slipping out of the top 200.

However, recent signs suggest the 24-year-old is finding her groove again. At the ASB Classic in Auckland in December, she progressed to the quarterfinals before being beaten in a three-set thriller by second-seed Julia Goerges.

That came on the back of an impressive last showing of 2018, when she again lost to Goerges, this time in the final of a tournament in Luxembourg.

Bouchard was overpowered by Serena Williams in the second round of last month’s Australian Open but showed glimpses of her best tennis to make the quarters at Newport Beach later in January.