Montreal teen sticking to clay events ahead of French Open
Felix Auger-Aliassime is going to spend the rest of the month playing in the dirt.
Fresh off his success in Canada’s Davis Cup win over Slovakia last weekend, Auger-Aliassime is in Buenos Aires, where he will play in next week’s Argentina Open.
He will also play clay court events in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo before returning to hard-court tennis with ATP Masters events in Indians Wells, Calif., and Miami.
“I enjoy playing on clay and I think I have a chance of going deep in one of these tournaments,” Auger-Aliassime, 18, said Thursday during a conference call from Buenos Aires.
“After these three tournaments, I’ll follow the regular schedule with clay going into the French Open, grass courts before Wimbledon and then back to North America for the hard-court season.”
Auger-Aliassime is No. 107 in the ATP Tour rankings and can crack the top 100 for the first time with a couple of wins in South America.
His goal for the coming year is to join countryman and good friend Denis Shapovalov in the top 50.
Canada defeated Slovakia 3-2 to earn a spot in the 18-nation Davis Cup finals. Auger-Aliassime supplied the deciding point when he defeated Norbert Gombos 6-3, 6-4 in the final singles match.
The Davis Cup format has undergone a dramatic change this year.
Previously, there were as many as four rounds spaced throughout the year. The new format features last weekend’s qualifying round and the finals in November in Madrid. Matches have been shortened from best-of-five sets to best of three.
The idea was to make the event more attractive to the top players by easing their workload, but Auger-Aliassime isn’t sure it’s going to have the desired effect.
“The finals are at the end of a long season and I’ve heard some players aren’t going to play,” said Auger-Aliassime.
Canada is seeded 13th for the finals and Auger-Aliassime believes the country deserved a higher seed.
“If we have Milos (Raonic) and Denis, we’ll be very strong,” he said.
Raonic, who is the top-ranked Canadian at No. 14, skipped the Slovakia tie and he’ll push Auger-Aliassime out of a singles assignment if he plays in the finals.
Auger-Aliassime isn’t the only Montreal teenager finding success on the tennis court this year. Leylah Annie Fernandez, 16, reached the final of the Australian Open junior women’s event and is No. 5 in the ITF junior rankings.
While Auger-Aliassime has his schedule mapped out for the first half of the year, Fernandez doesn’t have any events on her schedule.
“It depends on what tournaments I can get into and what we can afford,” Fernandez said from her training base in Florida.
She declined an invitation to train at Tennis Canada’s national training centre in Montreal.