First Serve: Canadians on the pro tennis tours this week

The members of Canada's victorious Fed Cup squad are off this week, having learned a lesson from Genie Bouchard's overnight sojourn from Montreal to the Middle East after February's matches that it's best to take a few days to recover.

Top male Canadian Milos Raonic, who was a semi-finalist at the ATP Tour 500 event in Barcelona a year ago, is skipping it this year. Instead, he'll play a smaller event next week in Oeiras, Portugal.

But his quarter-final effort in Monte Carlo last week bumped his ranking to a career-best No. 9 in the new ATP rankings list released Monday.

Despite the notable absences – both Bouchard and Raonic are gearing up for heavy clay-court schedules leading up to next month's French Open – there are plenty of Canadians in action this week around the world.

First and foremost is Vasek Pospisil, who has struggled this season first with a back injury, and then a major lack of confidence once he returned to the court.

Pospisil, who could have played the Barcelona event (and been seeded), chose a smaller clay-court tournament in Bucharest, Romania this week.

The 23-year-old is the No. 5 seed, and will play a home-country player Tuesday in his first round, qualifier Adrian Ungur.

Pospisil has already gotten his tournament off to a positive start; he and doubles partner Julian Knowle of Austria dispatched a very good team, Oliver Marach and Florin Mergea, 6-3, 6-3 in the first round of doubles Monday.

It was Pospisil's first win of any kind since his second-round victory over Matt Ebden at the Australian Open – more than three months ago.

Since then, Pospisil gave eventual champ Stanislas Wawrinka a walkover in the third round of singles and retired in the doubles in Australia. He then lost in the first round of singles and doubles in Acapulco, Indian Wells, a Challenger in Texas, Miami and Monte Carlo.

So the win had to give him a little bit of momentum going into his singles match.

Daniel Nestor and Serbian partner Nenad Zimonjic are the No. 5 seeds in Barcelona this week. They'll play the Colombian team of Robert Farah and Juan Sebasian Cabal in the first round.

Since Canada will play Colombia in their World Group playoff tie in September, Nestor will get a close-up look at the team, even though the surface will be different. He and another partner narrowly defeated them in the Brisbane final to start the season. Raonic also played this team last week in Monte Carlo, so there will be plenty of intel.

On the Challenger circuit, Frank Dancevic and Peter Polansky are seeded at the event in Savannah, Georgia (watch free livestreaming of the action here). They also are playing doubles together; Pickering, Ont.'s Adil Shamasdin is also in the doubles draw there with Australian partner Rameez Junaid.

Top prospect Filip Peliwo, who qualified for his first ATP Tour event two weeks ago in Casablanca, squeaked into the main draw of a new Challenger event in Vercelli, Italy this week (click here for streams). He'll play No. 6 seed Pierre-Hughes Herbert of France in the first round.

On the women's side, because of the Fed Cup, there isn't much action.

Junior hotshot Françoise Abanda is in the qualifying at a $50,000 clay-court tournament in Charlottesville, Va. this week. She won her first-round match on Sunday and easily defeated Ivana Lisjak of Croatia – a former top 100 player – in the second round Monday, 6-3, 6-0. One more to go.

Heidi El Tabakh is in the main draw there.

Bookmark this link to keep up with the Canadians' results through the week.