Andreescu To Miss Olympics for Canada

In this week's edition of the Canadian Corner we will recap a historic second week at Wimbledon while also previewing the upcoming week for Canadian tennis.

Wimbledon Success

For the first time in Canadian Tennis history Canada had two players in the second week of Wimbledon with Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger Aliassime.

Felix Auger Aliassime faced off against the Italian Matteo Berrettini but unfortunately lost in four sets to the Italian who would end up making it all the way to the final.

Denis Shapovalov on the other hand won a marathon five set match in his quarterfinal against the heavy hitting Russian Karen Khachanov coming back from two sets to one deficit to set up a mouthwatering match with the world number one Novak Djokovic.

Shapovalov in his pre match press conference said he was confident and that he was ready for the challenge and said he thought he had the weapons to beat him.

The Toronto native went into the match with an 0-6 record and in those six matches he didn’t even take a set off the Serb but got off to a great start and a notable slow start from the world number one.

Up 5-3 in the first Djokovic pulled off a comeback and managed to beat him in straight sets and Shapovalov was in tears leaving the court feeling he gave everything he had but still couldn’t get the win.

It’s still an amazing result and he can only go higher from here and is officially the new world number 10 which is another reason to keep moving forward.

Current News

There is only one Canadian tennis player playing this week and that is Vasek Pospisil who is in Newport this week at the Hall of Fame Open and is seeded number four and gets a first round bye.

He will either face Peter Gojowczyk or a qualifier in the second round and his first match.

Canada at the Olympics

The rest of the Canadian players will be off this week in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics which are scheduled from the 24th to the 30 of July.

Canada has officially nominated  Felix Auger Aliassime, Vasek Pospisil, Leylah Fernandez, Gabriela Dabrowski, and Sharon Fichman. Bianca Andreescu was officially nominated but pulled out due to the situation relating to the pandemic.

Some notable players who won’t be there are Milos Raonic and Denis Shapovalov who decided against playing the Olympics. Tokyo is still under a state of emergency and it was just confirmed that there will be 0 fans in attendance.

Frank Dancevic and Hedi El Tabakh will accompany the players to Japan and will be coaches for the mens and womens team respectively.

 Fernandez, Fichman, and Auger Aliassime will be playing in their first ever Olympic games while Dabrowski will be playing her second and Pospisil will be playing his third.

Canada so far only has one gold medal and that was way back in 2000 when Daniel Nestor and Sebastien Lareau won the mens doubles in Sydney.

Elias Laradi contributes to The Slice from Montreal, Canada