Success on clay boosts ranking of teen Auger-Aliassime

Montrealer, 17, rises to career-high ranking of No. 134

Playing in the dirt has paid dividends for Montreal tennis player Félix Auger-Aliassime.

The 17-year-old has spent the past four months in Europe playing on dusty red clay courts, and he came home this week with a career-high ranking of No. 134 on the ATP Tour.

Auger-Aliassime will return to his favourite hard court surface next week when he plays in the Rogers Cup Canadian Open men’s tennis championship in Toronto, but he proved that his aggressive game can produce results on the slower clay courts.

After losing in the second round of qualifying for the French Open, Auger-Aliassime’s coaches, Montrealer Guillaume Marx and Frenchman Frédéric Fontang, decided to skip the grass-court events leading up to Wimbledon.

“We decided it would be good to stick to a surface that I was good on,” Auger-Aliassime said Tuesday after a training session in Montreal. “I was playing a lot of Challengers, which meant I was playing a lot of matches, but the goal was also for me to play a couple of ATP 250 tournaments. I played in Umag (Croatia) and the Swiss Open and I won a match in each of them, which was good for my ranking and my confidence.”

Auger-Aliassime’s growing stature on the tour earned him wild cards into the two ATP 250 events and he also received a free pass into the Monte Carlo Masters, where he went three sets before losing to Mischa Zverev. He is the highestranked player in his age group and he is 12th in the ATP NextGen race for players 21 and younger. The top eight players advance to a seasonending tournament in Milan.

With the dirt behind him, Auger-Aliassime is focusing on his return to hard courts and his first appearance in the Rogers Cup. He and good friend Denis Shapovalov were both awarded wild cards for last year’s tournament in Montreal. While Shapovalov reached the semifinals, an abdominal strain left Auger-Aliassime on the sidelines.

Auger-Aliassime said he had no expectations for next week.

“I haven’t set any goals for myself as far as results are concerned,” he said. “I want to go out and play my game, play my best tennis. I played at this level earlier this year at Indian Wells, where I qualified and won a round so it won’t be a new experience. I started practising on the hard courts two days ago. I worked for about an hour and a half today and I’ll pick it up. We’ll go to Toronto on Thursday and get ready for my first match next week.”

Auger-Aliassime is also to play in a $100,000 Challenger in Vancouver later in the month before heading to New York for the U.S. Open qualifying event.

One minor disappointment is that Roger Federer is skipping the Rogers Cup. The Swiss superstar has been a mentor for AugerAliassime and they share an Aug. 8 birthday.