Tennis Canada misses golden opportunity by omitting teenager
Auger-Aliassime would have attracted fans to Rogers Cup if given a wild card
Tennis Canada missed a golden opportunity on Wednesday when it handed out the wild-card entries for the Rogers Cup.
Looking through the list of eight wild cards — four for the 56-player men’s main draw starting Monday and four for the qualifying event that begins Saturday at Jarry Park — there is a glaring omission.
Where is Félix Auger-Aliassime, the 14-year-old who reached the quarter-finals of the $100,000 Granby Challenger last month?
Eugene Lapièrre, the tournament director for the Montreal event, hinted that Auger-Aliassime might not be on the list of wild cards because the calibre of the qualifying event is very high and the youngster might be out of his element. That’s a good argument, but it loses much of its validity when one of the qualifying spots goes to David Volfson, a 17-year-old from Toronto.
Give Volfson credit for hard work and perseverance. He has been slogging it out in $10,000 Futures events — the tennis equivalent of the East Coast Hockey League — in Canada, Chile, Britain and, most recently, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. His current ranking on the ATP Tour is a career-high No. 1,008. His best results have been qualifying for a Challenger in Montevideo and a quarter-final appearance in a Futures tournament.
Volfson is clearly not in the same league as the top-100 players he’ll be facing in the Rogers Cup qualifying.
Auger-Aliassime’s resumé is thinner, but he has achieved far more success. He qualified for the main draw of a Challenger event — think American Hockey League — in Drummondville, where Volfson lost in the first round of qualifying.
An injury prevented Auger-Aliassime from playing in the main draw at Drummondville, but he qualified in Granby and reached the quarterfinals before losing in three sets to Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka, who is ranked No. 136. The results in Granby boosted the young Montrealer’s ranking to No. 748, making him the youngest player in history to crack the top 800.
The idea of wild cards is to promote local talent, and seven of the available spots are going to Canadians. Most of this year’s selections fall into the good-soldier category and recognize commitment to Davis Cup teams, while others are designed to help in a player’s development. This is where a wild card for Auger-Aliassime would have provided an incentive for a young player while also serving as a measuring stick for his development.
The other missed opportunity concerns the fans. There was a palpable buzz when Auger-Aliassime went on his run in Granby and there are many tennis supporters in Montreal who would have appreciated a chance to see the homegrown wunderkind.
Vancouver’s Vasek Pospisil tops the list of main-draw wild cards. He reached the semifinals of the Rogers Cup two years ago before a series of injuries slowed his progress. He made a jump in the rankings when he reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, but it came too late to earn a direct entry for the Rogers Cup.
Other main-draw wild cards are Philip Bester of Burnaby, B.C., who reached a career-high No. 228 after reaching the Granby final, Frank Dancevic of Niagara Falls, Ont., (No. 257) and former world No. 1 junior Filip Peliwo (No. 526) of Vancouver. Milos Raonic of Thornhill, Ont., ranked No. 10 in the world, has a direct entry.
Joining Volfson in the qualifying draw are Peter Polansky of Thornhill, Ont., (No. 506), NCAA standout Brayden Schnur of Pickering, Ont., (No. 583) and Ernests Gulbis, an entertaining Latvian who is No. 81.
Montrealer Françoise Abanda was awarded one of three wild cards to the main draw of the Rogers Cup women’s event in Toronto. NCAA runner-up Carol Zhao of Richmond Hill, Ont., and Ottawa’s Gabriela Dabrowski received the other wild cards to join Westmount’s Eugenie Bouchard as Canadians in the main draw.
Qualifying wild cards in Toronto went to 15-year-old Charlotte Robillard-Millette of Blainville and three Toronto players — Sharon Fichman, Heidi El-Tabakh and Katherine Sebov.