First Serve: Canadians on the pro tennis tours this week

Nearly all the Canadians are in action this week, with the top men kicking off their European clay-court campaigns in preparation for next month's French Open in Paris.

The ATP Tour's dirt season officially begins with the Masters 1000 stop in Monte Carlo, Monaco – arguably the most breathtaking vista in tennis and one of the most stunning in all of sport.

Top Canadian Milos Raonic moved up a spot with the late withdrawal of Frenchman Richard Gasquet. And because the top eight seeds have first-round byes (Raonic is now No. 8), he gets a free pass. Raonic will meet the winner of Yen-Hsun Lu of Taipei and Federico Delbonis of Argentina in the second round.

Countryman Vasek Pospisil is in action Monday, playing a tough customer in Roberto Bautista-Agut of Spain.

Both also are playing doubles – but in that grand Canadian tradition, they're not playing together. Raonic will team up with Ernests Gulbis of Latvia, who was also his partner at the Indian Wells event where they came up against the powerhouse pair of Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka in a very entertaining match. Pospisil will play with lefty Julian Knowle of Austria.

A blast from the past: photographic evidence that Canadians do, in fact, occasionally play doubles together.

Here's a very young Pospisil and Raonic, on Court 1 at Roland Garros playing in the French Open junior event in 2008.

The doubles draw in Monte Carlo (24 teams) is at an incredibly high level. Canadian doubles star Daniel Nestor and Serbian partner Nenad Zimonjic, seeded No. 5, have a first-round bye. But their second-round match will either be against the Spanish team of Granollers and Lopez, who have won a title at the year-end championships, or the Polish team of Fyrstenberg and Matkowski, a tough and experienced tandem who are unseeded.

Closer to home in Sarasota, Fla., a few of the lower-ranked male players also are in action.

Veteran Frank Dancevic, who has struggled this season with injury (a pulled stomach muscle at the Australian Open and in Davis Cup, a back injury when he attempted to return to action in early March) is back in the $100,000 Challenger event.

Also playing in Sarasota is Peter Polansky.

Dancevic faces No. 5 seed Tim Smyczek of the U.S. in the first round, while Polansky meets Ilija Bozoljac of Serbia who, as it happens, is a good friend of his – and of Dancevic's.

Pickering, Ont.'s Adil Shamasdin is in the doubles draw there, playing with Ramee Junaid of Australia.

As for the women, the top Canucks area headed to Quebec City for a highly anticipated Fed Cup playoff tie against Slovakia, which will take place this weekend.

Montreal's Eugenie Bouchard and Aleksandra Wozniak are expected to play singles; Sharon Fichman and Gabriela Dabrowski round out the four-woman squad. The winners of that tie will be in the prestigious World Group I – the top eight nations in women's tennis –for the 2015 season.

Eh Game will have complete coverage of that tie this weekend.

Another Canadian, Heidi El Tabakh, will compete in a $50,000 women's event in Dothan, Alabama this week.

In other news, highly-touted junior prospect Françoise Abanda of Montreal will get back on the pro tour next week, at a clay-court event in the U.S. She's in Montreal training for a few days on the indoor clay courts at the national tennis centre at Uniprix Stadium, before taking off down south.

On the injury front, Laval, Que.'s Stéphanie Dubois remains on the shelf with a right arm injury. If all goes well, she hopes to be back competing in May.

Ottawa native Jesse Levine is still recovering from elbow surgery last fall. An early return at the Challenger event in Sherbrooke, Que. last month proved rather too optimistic; he tells Eh Game that he's still a month or two away from returning to the Tour.

Finally, in ranking news, several Canadians have moved up to career highs in the ATP and WTA Tour rankings released Monday. Bouchard is now ranked No. 18 (without hitting a single tennis ball last week!). Abanda is at No. 277 and 20-year-old Filip Peliwo, who qualified for his first ATP Tour event in Casablanca last week and won his first-round match, is at a career-best No. 230 and should make the cut for qualifying at Roland Garros next month.

To keep up with the Canadian results from all over, updated all week long, bookmark this link.