Has their time now arrived?
Auger-Aliassime, Shapovalov not expected to win, but one could
Yes, they’re even going to play a Grand Slam tennis tournament starting next week.
It might have seemed until now the Novak Djokovic immigration drama was the lone driving force for the gathering of the best male and female players in Australia. Come see No-Vax and his parents take on the Australian government!
It has been seemingly all that anyone has wanted to talk about. Word that Netflix is using the Australian Open to begin shooting the tennis equivalent of the docuseries “F1: Drive to Survive” suggests the cameras may already have all they need, plot-wise, before a single serve has been hit.
The truth is this could be a fascinating year in tennis, particularly in the men’s game with the ongoing absence of Roger Federer and the overall sense the sport will, in the relatively foreseeable future, no longer be dominated by a small group of players.
Of the Big Three, only Djokovic sits in the top five in the world any longer.
Daniil Medvedev, Alexander Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Andrey Rublev round out the five topranked players.
Longtime stalwarts Stan Wawrinka, Juan Martín del Potro, Andy Murray and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga aren’t major forces any longer.
This is the very fluid landscape that two young Canadians, Félix Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov, will encounter in Melbourne.
Auger-Aliassime, just 21, is ranked No. 9 in the world, the youngest member of the ATP top 10. Shapovalov, 22, is No. 14.
The Canadians may be young, but they’re no longer wide-eyed rookies. They’re both at the point where their experience should start to become an asset. Both have had their ups and downs, their wins over top players and their battle wounds.
Both have become leading players in international tennis, most recently at the relatively new ATP Cup, held in Sydney earlier this month. While the field was diluted by two other ATP tournaments going on at the same time, they still had to deal with Zverev and the Germans and a Russian team led by Medvedev before finally defeating a Rafael Nadal-less Spanish squad to win the competition.
Given that Auger-Aliassime has yet to win an ATP singles title and Shapovalov has just one (Stockholm indoors, 2019), winning the ATP Cup was a significant achievement for both.
It should also give them a sense of momentum going into this year’s Aussie Open.
Both appear to be the kind who, given some luck and perhaps the departure of top seeds at the hands of others, could take a run at the singles title.
Auger-Aliassime, you’ll recall, won five matches in New York last September to get to the semifinals of the U.S. Open, the first player born in the 2000s to get to a Grand Slam semi. That came after getting to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon and a round-of-16 appearance at the 2021 Australian Open.
Of the two Canadians, he’s the one who most looks like he’s trending toward his first Grand Slam triumph. But he’s also got to prove himself to be a finisher.
Shapovalov, meanwhile, was a semifinalist at Wimbledon, losing to Djokovic, and a quarterfinalist at the 2020 U.S. Open. There was a time when tennis experts were comparing Shapovalov to Federer, but those comparisons have quieted. The southpaw is more explosive than Auger-Aliassime, but also streakier and prone to being negative on court.
They are very different characters. It’s not surprising they complement one another in doubles, and did so in the ATP Cup with great effectiveness. They needed to beat Medvedev and his partner to eliminate Russia in the semis, and did.
Both begin Down Under against opponents they should be able to handle. Auger-Aliassime starts out against 90th-ranked Emil Ruusuvuori, the only Finn in the top 100. The Montrealer is in the same quarter of the draw as Medvedev and Rublev.
Shapovalov, meanwhile, is in the same quarter as Nadal and Zverev. In the first round, he gets Laslo Djere of Serbia, a 26-year-old journeyman ranked No. 52.
It’s worth remembering that 12 months ago Auger-Aliassime was outside the top 20 in the world. Shapovalov was a little higher at No. 12, and Milos Raonic, despite all his injuries, was still No. 14. Raonic is 31 now, and it seems unlikely he’ll get back to the point where he almost became the first Canadian male to win a Grand Slam singles title when he got to Wimbledon final in 2016, losing to Murray.
Hardcore tennis fans, and Canadian sports fans who only occasionally dip their toes into tennis waters, should have learned some important lessons from watching Raonic’s career. There’s a big difference between believing a player is ready to win one of the sport’s big tournaments and seeing it actually happen. Tennis history is filled with really good players who, for one reason or another, never won the big one.
But, while Raonic had to deal with Federer, Djokovic, Nadal and Murray in the prime of their careers, Auger-Aliassime and Shapovalov don’t. They both have stronger allaround games than Raonic, and don’t have to start out every Grand Slam event thinking they’ll have to beat at least one legend, and possibly two, to come out on top.
It would be a surprise if either Canadian won this year’s Australian Open, but not a shock. They are contenders. Netflix probably wouldn’t even mind a Canadian winner, as an intriguing opening storyline to its first season of revealing the inner workings of the tennis world.