First Serve: Canadians on the pro tennis tours this week

SINGAPORE – As Canadian Genie Bouchard takes part in her first year-end championships, two other Canadians are attempting to do the same on the men's side.

World No. 9 Milos Raonic is in Basel, Switzerland, locked in a dogfight for the final spot at the ATP World Tour Finals, to be held at London's O2 Arena next month.

He was an alternate a year ago, but didn't get to play. With two weeks left in the regular season, the 23-year-old lost some ground last week as veterans David Ferrer and Andy Murray, who took last-minute wild cards into a tournament in Vienna, both passed him with good results.

It's still too close to call, though; Raonic is playing the tougher of the two tournaments this week, the Swiss Open in Basel. That's Roger Federer's hometown; he's there and so is Rafael Nadal, for the first time since 2004.

Raonic opens against American Steve Johnson and has a good draw to the semi-finals. If ever there was a good opportunity to beat Rafael Nadal for the first time – on a quick, indoor court, against a Nadal who is postponing an appendectomy to play these next two weeks – this is it.

Murray and Ferrer are in Valencia, Spain and drawn in the same half, so only one can potentially go further than the semi-finals. Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic, seeking to solidify a spot, took a wild card into Valencia and is the No. 2 seed.

Essentially, there are two spots left, and those currently ranked 7-10 are fighting for it. Grigor Dimitrov, at No. 11 with 3,555 points, also can't be overlooked if he makes a couple of major runs.

As for Vasek Pospisil, he finds himself in a similar situation as Raonic, except on the doubles side of things.  A week ago, he and Wimbledon partner Jack Sock were No. 7 in the race as a team; today, they stand ninth. Unfortunately for Pospisil, the fate of the team's bid is largely not under his control.

Amid all the doubles specialists that populate the top of the charts, Pospisil and Sock have played just six tournaments together. They have hardly played together since the U.S. Open, having entered different tournaments through the fall swing.

Pospisil is playing with longtime Daniel Nestor partner Nenad Zimonjic this week in Basel. The first-time pair is seeded No. 2, but results with other partners do not count in the doubles race (Sock is playing with countryman John Isner at the Valencia tournament). The last chance for Pospisil and Sock to earn some points will be next week, at the Masters 1000 tournament in Paris.

There is a loophole for the Can-American pair, though. As in the singles race, a team that wins a Grand Slam, if it doesn't finish in the top seven pairs but does remain in the top 20, automatically gets a spot in the year-end finals. But there's a catch. The team right behind them, Robert Lindstedt and Lukasz Kubot, are in the same situation. The two won the Australian Open in January.

If Lindstedt and Kubot finish ahead of Pospisil and Sock, they would grab that final qualifying spot and Pospisil and Sock would be the first alternates. The Swedish-Polish duo is seeded No. 4 in Basel, so at least that means Pospisil and ZImonjic have an opportunity to take them out in the semi-finals, if both teams get there.

One final bit of intrigue in Basel: while Pospisil teams up with Nestor's recently-divorced partner Zimonjic, Nestor (who was in Toronto last week for a charity event and flew back to Europe) is playing with his reported new partner for 2015, Rohan Bopanna of India. They are the third seeds; the pairs could only clash in the final. That could be a little ... awkward.

On the Canadian side, a $50,000 women's Challenger event in Saguenay, Quebec features just about every young Canadian player, led by No. 6 seed Françoise Abanda. Most of the other girls from the national training program in Montreal are there as well: Charlotte Robillard-Millette, Maria Patrascu, Marie-Alexandre Leduc are among them.

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