Vasek Pospisil sets his eyes on 2014 after a breakthrough tennis season on the ATP Tour

Vasek Pospisil doesn’t consider himself to be much of a spender.

He earned more than $600,000 in prize money on the ATP Tour this year, jumping from no. 140 to no. 32 in the world singles rankings. Yet a week after wrapping up his breakthrough season he isn’t really thinking about the financial side of his success.

Well, other than the fact that he plans to spend a small part of the prize money on a new Mac computer.

“I’ve had mine for the last six years or something and it’s fallen apart completely,” Pospisil said on a season-ending conference call earlier this week.

“I’ll probably spend a lot of it on my family and parents who’ve helped me since I was a little kid. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for my dad and them.”

He’s right.

When Vasek was 12 years old he and his mother Mila picked up and moved from Vernon, British Columbia to an apartment in Vancouver – about four and a half hours away – so he could pursue his tennis dreams on a more full-time basis with Vadim Korkh, a former professor of tennis in Russia. According to a Vancouver Sun story, Mila home schooled Vasek while his dad Milos stayed at the family home in Vernon doing his best to juggle the bills and visit his son and wife on weekends.

What was likely seen as a risk for the family at the time has begun to pay off this season, though it didn’t happen right away.

The 23-year-old was battling mononucleosis towards the end of 2012, a sickness that not only condensed his off-season training regimen, but also forced him to withdraw from the 2013 Australian Open and miss the first month of ATP Tour action.

He didn’t return until Canada’s Davis Cup tie with Spain in early February when he and Daniel Nestor outlasted Marcel Granollers and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez in a five-set doubles match.

While the match was key for Canada’s eventual victory over Spain, Pospisil struggled on the singles court upon his return to ATP action.

He failed to make it out of the second round in five straight tournaments before winning a Challenger event in Rimouski, Que., just prior to Canada’s quarterfinal Davis Cup tie with Italy.

It was during that tie, at the Thunderbird Sports Centre in Vancouver, that the 6-foot-4, 185-pound Pospisil feels his year was jump-started.

After he and Nestor gave up a two-set lead to Daniele Bracciali and Fabio Fognini in the lone doubles match, the Canadian duo fought off the Italian pair 15-13 in a memorable fifth set.

“When we beat Italy and we won the big doubles match I think that gave me a lot of confidence in the weeks that followed,” Pospisil said. “In that aspect for sure I think it may have influenced my year.”

While Pospisil’s season didn’t suddenly take off from there, he cracked the top-100 for the first time two months later and has been climbing the rankings ever since.

His most memorable moment?

“The two that are up there for me are the Rogers Cup run to the semi-finals and the Davis Cup,” he said. “Those were definitely the highest moments for me.”

It was at the Rogers Cup in Montreal that Pospisil recorded his first ever victory over a top-10 singles player, a 7-5, 2-6, 7-6(5) win over world no. 6 ranked Tomas Berdych in the round of 16. He advanced to the semifinals before being eliminated by fellow Canadian Milos Raonic.

Now Pospisil will reset and begin looking ahead to 2014. He says he’s both physically and mentally exhausted, likely from the gruelling schedule of play and the travel schedule that comes with that. The plan is for him to return to Florida and soon after begin training again with his coach, Frederic Fontang.

His impressive run in 2013 means that he could be seeded at a Grand Slam event for the first time come January’s Australian Open.

“After the Rogers Cup my coach and I sat down and he said ‘Listen we reached our top 50 goal already so let’s set another goal’ and that was to reach the top 32 and maybe be seeded at the Australian Open,” he said.

Setting both developmental and rankings goals is something that Pospisil says is important so he constantly sets his sights forward.

“Now next year [a goal] might be to reach the top 15 or top 20.”

If he’s able to achieve that goal then maybe at the end of the 2014 season he’ll consider treating himself to more than just a new computer.