Canadian claims Wimbledon boys’ crown
After Super Sunday — the biggest day in the history of Canadian tennis — there’s only one person coming home from Wimbledon with a championship trophy.
That would be Denis Shapovalov, the good-looking blond kid from Richmond Hill, Ont., with the great smile and laugh — and an ever better tennis game.
Canada had a shot at three championships Sunday but Shapovalov was the only winner, beating Australia’s Alex De Minaur 4-6, 6-1, 6-3 in the boys’ singles final to start the day on the No. 1 Court. Milos Raonic, looking to become the first Canadian to win a major Grand Slam singles championship, lost in straight sets, 6-4, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (2), to Great Britain’s Andy Murray later in the day on Centre Court.
After that, Shapovalov and Montreal’s Félix Auger-Aliassime lost their boys’ doubles final on the No. 1 court, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2, to Estonia’s Kenneth Raisma and Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas.
Things didn’t start off well for Shapovalov, who served the first game of the match and didn’t win a single point to fall behind 1-0. He broke right back in the second game, but then was broken again to fall behind 2-1 en route to losing the set.
“Yeah, I was very nervous, to be honest,” Shapovalov said. “Started off making a lot of errors in the first couple of games. I managed to break him back at the start, but I got broken once again. After I got broken the second time, just told myself: ‘Calm down a little bit.’ Started making some longer rallies. By the end of the first set, I gained my confidence back. I was ready to go in the second.” Was he ever. The left-handed Shapovalov put on an impressive display of power grass-court tennis, featuring a wicked one-handed backhand his mother, Tessa, taught him at the tennis school she runs in Vaughan, Ont.
The Canadian kid, looking pretty cool with his long hair and white ball cap on backwards, hit 126 mph with his serve and pounded 25 winners, compared with only eight for his opponent.
Shapovalov becomes only the second Canadian to win a Grand Slam boys’ championship after Vancouver’s Filip Peliwo, who won both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 2012. Eugenie Bouchard of Westmount, Que., is the only Canadian to win a girls’ singles Grand Slam title, doing it at Wimbledon the same years as Peliwo.
Before entering the main interview room after his doubles match, Shapovalov had a chance to phone his parents back home.
“I just wanted to thank them, actually, because of all their support they’re doing,” Shapovalov said. “I also want to thank my mom (who) opened up her own training club where I’m training at, TessaTennis. Without that, I wouldn’t have anywhere to train.”
Shapovalov was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, but his family moved to Canada when he was only nine months old.
He wanted to play hockey as a kid, but his parents were afraid he would get hurt and he started playing tennis at age 5.