First Serve: Canadians on the pro tours this week

March 2, 2015 at 12:34 p.m.

Milos Raonic does his best Lyle Lovett impersonation as he visits one of the New Balance stores in Vancouver ahead of Davis Cup.

Most of the male Canadian tennis contingent is in Vancouver, or en route, as the Davis Cup squad prepares for its first-round tie against Kei Nishikori and Japan beginning Friday at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre in Vancouver.

Milos Raonic (seen above at a promotional appearance for New Balance, his clothing sponsor) will lead the team, seconded by Vasek Pospisil. Doubles star Daniel Nestor, who just won the big tournament in Dubai with tour partner Rohan Bopanna, will also be on hand.

Frank Dancevic is the fourth member of the squad; also on hand will be 21-year-old Filip Peliwo and doubles specialist Adil Shamasdin, who will act as practice partners.

Eh Game will have ball-to-ball coverage of the tie, beginning on Thursday.

Meanwhile, on the women's side, top Canadian Genie Bouchard remains out of action.

Information is scarce; we do know that Bouchard has visited the set of the television show the Big Bang Theory, returning the favour after her big fan, actor Jim Parsons, so ably supported her at Wimbledon summer. She also is planning where she will see singer Taylor Swift on her 2015 world tour.

Other than that, there's a fair bit of mystery. We do know that the arm injury that forced Bouchard to pull out of Dubai is ongoing, and also necessitated her withdrawal from this week's tournament in Monterrey. We're told that she's still not training at full intensity, and that the arm injury might be a by-product of adjusting to new coach Sam Sumyk's patented lengthy training sessions.

But we don't know how serious it is, and whether it might compromise the upcoming major event at Indian Wells, which begins in 10 days.

The Monterrey event also has been left a bit in the dark, despite a major investment in the doubling of its prize money to $500,000 in order to have two top-10 players in its field (the other is defending champion Ana Ivanovic).

Here's the response received by Eh Game Sunday from tournament director Hernan Garza in response to an e-mail (translated from Spanish):

"On the issue of Eugenie Bouchard, we can say that on Friday, February 27 around 2 p.m. local time, two hours before the close of player registration, we received a statement from the WTA which reported the withdraw of the player. As of today we have not received, from the player or her representative, an excuse not to participate in our event."

It should be pointed out that Bouchard did go by the book there, although the personal touch never hurts. The official reason for withdrawal, according to the WTA, is a "right forearm injury." If it's an ongoing injury, not much more needs to be done than that.

There is a Canadian player in Monterrey: doubles specialist Gabriela Dabrowski has criss-crossed the planet in the last few weeks.

Dabrowski went from Fed Cup in Quebec City, to Antwerp, Belgium, to Dubai and Doha in the Middle East, all the way to Mexico this week. She is reunited there with regular doubles partner Alicja Rosolska of Poland.

The Canadian won his first tournament in nearly four years at the ITF Futures event in Trentino, Italy Sunday. (Twitter)

If you're in the Ottawa/Gatineau area this week, there is a $15,000 men's Futures event chock-full of Canadians, most trying to take their first steps on the pro circuit.

Of the 43 players in the qualifying draw, 28 are Canadian – so it's likely some of them will move on.

Vancouver's Philip Bester, who won his seventh career pro title Sunday at a similar event in Trentino, Italy, is on the entry list.

Bester, who had hip surgery, is slowly making his way back. He has won some doubles titles and made some finals, but this was his first singles title since June, 2011.

Montreal's Françoise Abanda, who just played two $25,000 tournaments in the U.S., finds herself with no place to play this week. Her singles ranking isn't high enough to even get her into the qualifying of the WTA Tour events in Monterrey and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. And the only $25,000 tournament even being heldthis week is down in Brazil, on red clay.

So Abanda signed up to play the "pre-qualifying" event at Indian Wells, which is in the Palm Springs, Calif. area.

It's a crazy, free-for-all tournament where only the champion out of a 128-player draw (not a full 128 for the women, full 128 for the men) receives a wild card into .. the QUALIFYING of Indian Wells.

That's seven matches in a rather short period of time; the event starts Monday. It's also a tournament that traditionally is full of no-shows; for example, both Arina and Anastasia Rodionova, the Russian-Australian sisters, are entered (Anastasia Rodionova won it a year ago). But they are playing doubles together in Monterrey this week, so they're unlikely to make it.

Abanda is the No. 8 seed, with a first-round bye. It's a longshot, but at least there's the possibility of getting some match play the 18-year-old needs. And having played at Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. a week ago, she already was in the neighbourhood.

Bookmark this link to keep up with Canadian results this week. And check back at week's end for our Davis Cup coverage from Vancouver.