Canadians get bounced from Calgary Challenger
And then there were none.
Nine Canadians started the singles journey of the 2020 Calgary National Bank Challenger, but the last of the host nation’s representatives fell Thursday afternoon at Calgary’s Osten & Victor Alberta Tennis Centre.
Montreal’s Brayden Schnur was bested by Germany’s Tobias Kamke in third-round action.
“Honestly, it’s been a tough start to the year for me,” said Schnur, 24, who came into Calgary’s stop on the ATP Challenger Tour ranked 178th in the world. “So I’m just trying to take it one match at a time. “I’ve battled some injuries.” On Thursday, Schnur battled hard in the first set, only to lose a heartbreaker in 7-6(5).
Then in the second set, it was the match after falling 6-3.
The result falls short of his shortterm goal to improve on the quarter-final appearance he made in the inaugural Calgary National Bank Challenger 16 months ago.
“I’ve always had good results here in Calgary in the futures event and now the challengers event, so I’ve always had pretty good weeks here,” Schnur said.
“I’ve had good memories here in Calgary, so (I was) looking to catch hold of that.”
Especially since he came into Calgary feeling healthy and excited to take the court after injuries hindered his momentum from a brilliant 2019 season.
“I hurt myself at Davis Cup last year and missed my whole off-season and started playing tennis after Christmas and decided I’d play (in the Australian Open in January),” Schnur said. “It probably wasn’t the smartest decision looking back at it.
“I kind of rushed into it. Looking back at that decision, I realized how important the off-season is. I’m still young — I made a mistake in my career. Is it the biggest one? Probably not. But you live and learn.”
Given the current landscape of Canadian tennis, there’s plenty of homegrown stars to help him learn, including Vasek Pospisil, whose bounce from the Calgary event late Wednesday was a tourney downer.
“I think Vasek is a really good role model for me,” Schnur said. “The way he’s gone about his career has been pretty similar to mine thus far, results-wise, rankings-wise … and even game-style-wise. Vasek is definitely a good player to look up to, and off the court, he’s a super-nice guy.
“He’s helped me out a lot — tennis-related stuff and non-tennis-related stuff.”
The hope is to one day climb into a spot alongside the likes of the top-shelf Canadian men.
Currently, that’s a quartet of tennis stars — Pospisil, Milos Raonic, Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-aliassime — who are the likely Canucks headed to Tokyo for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games this summer.
“He’s kind of the odd man out right now,” Nestor said of Schnur. “He’s out of the top four, so he’s kind of on the outside looking in.
“He’s got a big game. He’s a big guy who serves huge. He had a big year last year — he broke through. Now he’s trying to regain his confidence to try to get the ranking up there again.”
Since Schnur reached No. 92 in the ATP rankings just last August, he certainly knows it’s an attainable goal.
“Obviously, getting back into the top 100 is a huge accomplishment for any tennis player,” Schnur said. “I’d like to do better than I did last year — every player’s goal is to keep improving every year. But at the end of the day, I’m just trying to enjoy myself on court and trying to raise the level of wins that I had last year. Those top 100, top 50 wins … I’d like to grab a couple more of those.”
SERVICE ACES
Vancouver’s Felip Peliwo is the last standing Canadian at the Calgary National Bank Challenger. He’s still alive in doubles action with partner Harry Bourchier, of Australia. The Peliwo-bourchier team meet up Friday in a quarter-final against Poland’s Karol Drzewiecki and Portugal’s Goncalo Oliveira. … Day 5 Friday is quarter-final day for both singles and doubles, with the early session starting at noon and the evening matches starting at 6:30 p.m. … On Saturday, the semifinals for both singles and doubles go at noon. And Sunday, the championship doubles match is slated for 1 p.m. followed by the singles finale.