First Serve – Canadians on the pro tennis tours this week

Last week was a successful one on the Canadian side as the Davis squad swept Chile in its World Group playoff tie, Philip Bester and Peter Polansky won the doubles title at a $50,000 Challenger in Cary, NC, and Filip Peliwo won the singles at a $25,000 ITF tournament held at the Aviva Centre in Toronto.

Just about everyone is back at it this week.

As the Davis Cuppers were wrapping up in Halifax, top gun Milos Raonic was headed to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he has an ATP Tour title to defend. Adil Shamasdin, who played doubles with Vasek Pospisil in Halifax, also will play there, partnered with Johnny Marray of Great Britain.

After a first-round bye, he'll face one of a pair of veterans, Russian Mikhail Youzhny or Serbia's Janko Tipsarevic.

Frank Dancevic headed straight from Halifax to Columbus, Ohio to play an ATP Tour Challenger. Among those also in the draw are Bester and Polansky.

Peliwo's win was his first title in nearly a year, since he took a $15,000 Futures event in Great Britain last November. He is at a similar tournament in Niagara, Ont. this week that has been named the Bruno Agostinelli Open, to pay tribute to the Niagara Falls native, a Canadian former Davis Cup player and national coach who died tragically last March in a motorcycle accident.

The Davis Cup players also wore a patch with Agostinelli's first name during the tie last weekend.

The qualifying, singles and doubles draws in Niagara are once again full of Canadians as the tournament is another opportunity for the up-and-comers to earn ATP ranking points at home.

US Open junior champion Félix Auger-Aliassime, who might otherwise have played that tournament, took a few days off in Montreal and is already in Hungary, where he will play the junior Davis Cup finals in Budapest in a couple of weeks. He is tuning up for that on the red clay at a $10,000 Futures event in Dunakeszi along with young teammates Nicaise Muamba and Chih Chi Huang.

Chilean Nicolas Jarry, who might be sick of Canada by now after last weekend's Davis Cup tie, drew wild card Benjamin Sigouin in the first round.

Sigouin, 17, lost in the first round of singles at the US Open juniors two weeks ago (he reached the doubles final with Félix Auger-Aliassime). The Vancouver native headed straight to the Toronto tournament and as a wild card last week reached the semi-finals of the singles and the finals of the doubles.

Genie Bouchard is idle this week; she has two big Premier-level events, Wuhan and Beijing, scheduled the following two weeks. Two other Canadian women, Aleksandra Wozniak and Carol Zhao, are playing a $75,000 ITF tournament in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Zhao is in the qualifying, while Wozniak has a wild card into the main draw.

To keep up with all the Canadian happenings this week, bookmark this link.

The Draw for the first round of the 2017 Davis Cup will be made Thursday morning in London. Canada will face one of eight possible nations, four of which would be home ties and four of which will be decided by a coin flip.

France, Argentina, Belgium and Serbia would be at home; Great Britain, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Croatia will be by lot. Check back with Eh Game tomorrow morning for the outcome.