First Serve – Canadians on the pro tennis tours this week

More than two dozen Canadians competed at the various levels of pro tennis last week – a big number even if only a select few were at the ATP/WTA level.

The last man standing was Denis Shapovalov, just turned 17 and making waves on the tough $10,000 ITF Circuit down in the southern U.S.

Shapovalov bumped his won-loss record on the season to 37-7 as he reached the semi-finals of the event in Vero Beach tournament last weekend. That's not even counting doubles. All but one of the tournaments was at the Futures level. The other was the Drummondville Challenger, which has a purse of $100,000; Shapovalov reached the semi-finals there and lost, 6-4 in the third set, to Great Britain's Daniel Evans. Evans, it should be noted, cracked the top 100 in the ATP Tour rankings today.

The ranking points from his previous week's title in Orange Park, Fla. kicked in Monday; Shapovalov's ranking now stands at a career-high No. 405. When his semi-final effort in Vero Beach is added in, he should reach another career best, at approximately No. 392.

This week brings more of the same with the extra-added attraction of the two top Canadians, Milos Raonic and Genie Bouchard, back in action. As of Monday, Raonic is back in the top 10 in the ATP Tour singles rankings.

Bouchard's stay in Madrid was short; she was eliminated in the first round of the Mutua Madrid Open Sunday in three sets.

But the rest remain, with Raonic and Vasek Pospisil both in Madrid along with veteran doubles star Daniel Nestor. If Nestor and partner Radek Stepanek get through their first-round match, they would face Pospisil and partner Jack Sock in the second round.

At the Challenger level (or the equivalent on the women's side, the $50,000 and $75,000 ITF tournaments), Spanish Canadian Steven Diez is in Uzbekistan, Françoise Abanda is in Indian Harbour Beach, Fla. and Pickering, Ont.'s Adil Shamasdin is playing doubles in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Former Wimbledon and U.S. Open junior champion Filip Peliwo continues on an Asian swing and posted two good wins in the quaifying before falling in a third-set nailbiter to veteran Michal Przysieszny of Poland. The jump from the Futures level to the Challengers is a tough one, especially if you have to go through the qualifying. But Asia is the best place to try if you can afford it; because of the prohibitive cost of travel, the depth of the player fields there isn't the same as it is in Europe.

At the lower levels, 15-year-old phenom Félix Auger-Aliassime is getting his Babolat shoes wet, so to speak, on the European clay in advance of the junior French Open. He is entered in a $10,000 pro tournament in Lleida, Spain.

Veteran Frank Dancevic is on the Hungarian Futures circuit in Szeged for the third consecutive week; he is the top seed. Davis Cup veterans Philip Bester and Peter Polansky are close to Polansky's home base in Florida; both are seeded in a $10,000 tournament in Tampa.

To follow all of the Canadians in action this week, bookmark this link.