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First Serve – Canadians on the pro tennis tours this week
The top Canadian women, with the exception of the injured Genie Bouchard, are in Bratislava, Slovakia to fight for their Fed Cup lives in a World Group II playoff tie.
But elsewhere around the the tennis world, the spring clay-court season leading up to next month’s French Open begins for real with the men’s Masters 1000 tournament in picturesque Monte Carlo.
Milos Raonic, in his first match on clay this year and his first since being eliminated in the quarter-finals of the Miami Open by Aussie Nick Kyrgios, looked a little ragged in his first-round match Monday against Italian wild card Marco Cecchinato.
But the 25-year-old, who is a resident of the principality and has reached the quarter-finals at the tournament each of the last two years, prevailed 6-3, 7-5 to move into the second round.
Cecchinato, a 23-year-old from Palermo, also resides in Monte Carlo (hence the likely reason he was awarded a wild card, given he is currently ranked No. 98 and not considered an up-and-coming star).
Raonic next will face the winner of a match between two quality clay-court players: qualifier Daniel Gimeno-Traver of Spain and Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay.
He wasn’t particularly pleased with his effort.
"I let myself fall into a little bit too much of a defensive pattern where I was playing a little too far back. It didn't allow me to use my game to dictate. I was a little bit more reactive rather than proactive,” Raonic told the media in Monte Carlo.
In all, Raonic went 16-for-24 at the net. But he was 9-for-12 in the first seven games of the match before dialling down the aggression considerably.
Perhaps he got a little gunshy after a couple of Cecchinato’s one-handed backhand passing shots hit their marks. But he shouldn’t have been. The Italian slapped at a few that went in but for the most part, Raonic’s groundstrokes were far superior. As were, obviously, his serve and forehand.
Raonic was more than likely familiar with Cecchinato from the ATP training camps held in Monte Carlo just before the beginning of each season, and perhaps even more often as a practice partner when he's home. Knowing that Cecchinato really didn’t have much with which to to hurt him, he took his foot off the gas pedal a little bit. Plus, there appeared to be a few nerves; early on, there was a surprising amount of barking from the Canadian whose newfound serenity on court in 2016 has been one of the benchmarks of his success.
Raonic’s won-loss record so far in this season in relatively limited play (he missed two smaller events, plus the Davis Cup tie against France, with an adductor injury suffered in Australia) is a sterling 17-3.
At No. 12 in the current rankings, which are calculated over a 52-week period, he is right behind Novak Djokovic at No. 2 in the race to qualify for the final eight at the ATP Tour finals in London. There is a long way to go, though.
Although it appeared the biggest news on the fashion side might be the hint of a moustache the Canadian sported at the tournament launch party (see below), he had a bigger surprise in store.
After two years of making the right sleeve a trademark, Raonic showed up on the stadium court with a … nude right arm.
We’ll see if that was just a matter of leaving the sleeve back at his apartment, or a permanent state of affairs going forward.
Toronto's Daniel Nestor also is in Monte Carlo; unseeded, he and Czech partner Radek Stepanek defeated the French all-star team of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Richard Gasquet 7-6 (4), 6-4 in the first round. Their second-round match will be a rematch of the Australian Open men's doubles final, against No. 4 seeds Jamie Murray of Great Britain and Bruno Soares of Brazil.
In other Canadian news, the Bouchard-less Canadian quartet of Aleksandra Wozniak, Françoise Abanda, Sharon Fichman and Charlotte Robillard-Millette will be in Bratislava, Slovakia this weekend for a World Group II tie they must win to stay at the World Group level.
The tie begins Saturday; stay tuned to Eh Game for updates on that.
At the lower level, the news Sunday was another tournament title for 16-year-old Denis Shapovalov of Toronto.
The lefty, who came out of the qualifying, defeated No. 2 seed Tennys Sandgren of the U.S. 7-6, 7-6 in the final of a $25,000 ITF Pro Circuit event in Memphis, Tennessee.
It's the second pro title of Shapovalov’s career; he won a $10,000 event in Florida in January in which he had to win four matches in qualifying, just to reach the main draw.
Shapovalov, who turns 17 Friday, began the season ranked outside the top 1,000 and has played a lot of matches at tennis’s lower levels. He did not make the trip to play the Australian Open juniors because of the prohibitive cost; unlike his frequent doubles partner Félix Auger-Aliassime, Shapovalov is not one of Tennis Canada’s national training centre players and, as such, doesn’t have all his expenses covered.
When the results from last week are counted, he will be ranked around No. 450.
Shapovalov and North Vancouver’s Philip Bester are entered in a similar $25,000 tournament in Little Rock, Arkansas this week.
The Canadian junior national centre boys – Benjamin Sigouin, Jack Mingjie Lin and Alexis Galarneau – are in Istres, France at an ITF Grade 2 junior event. Sigouin is the No. 1 seed.
To follow all the Canadian results this week, bookmark this link.
