Canadians Play in Boston, Chicago, & San Diego
Canadians on Team World
Last weekend two Canadian players Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger Aliassime were involved in an event called the Laver Cup this year being held in Boston.
This tournament was created with the goal in mind to pit the best players in the world against the best players from Europe and so far Team Europe went into the weekend not having lost once.
This three-day event with the first team to reach 13 points with matches on Friday going for a single point, Saturday double, and Sunday triple which also featured singles and doubles matches.
The event started on Friday with Auger Aliassime being featured in singles against his good friend and Italian Matteo Berrettini and the Montreal native ended up losing a very tight match 6-7, 7-5, 10-8.
In the last match of the day, the doubles pairing of Denis Shapovalov and the American John Isner beat the pairing of Berrettini and Alexander Zverev to give Team World its first point.
On Saturday Shapovalov faced the US Open champion in Danill Medvedev and the Russian was in no mood to play games as he routed him 6-4, 6-0.
Tennis In The Land (Chicago)
Focusing now on this week and we saw the return of Bianca Andreescu at the Chicago Fall Tennis Classic in the windy city ahead of her title defence next week in Indian Wells.
“ I went home after the US Open and I took a couple of days off before flying to California to train and prepare for the end of the season and I feel really prepared”.
That was Andreescu at her pre-tournament press conference stating how she felt coming into the tournament.
Things didn’t go as planned as she lost her opening match to the American Shelby Rogers 6-4, 7-5.
San Diego baby
Turning our attention to the men we now focus our attention on Shapovalov and Auger Aliassime who had made the trip to California the week prior to Indian Wells to compete in the new San Diego Open.
Denis Shapovalov got his run going by beating the California native Taylor Fritz in two tight sets 7-6, 6-2 and that win put him in the quarterfinal of a tournament for the first time since Wimbledon.
The next match didn’t go so well for Shapovalov as he was beaten handily by a fellow lefty and Brit Cameron Norrie 6-3, 6-1 and in that match looked like he couldn’t get anything going.
Auger Aliassime was scheduled to face Grigor Dimitrov in his first match but mere hours before they were scheduled to play the Montreal native pulled out with an adductor strain and no confirmation yet if he will play or pull out of Indian Wells.
Indian Wells begins on October 7th in the Californian desert and Andreescu is actually the defending champion from 2019 due to the fact last year’s tournament was canceled due to Covid.
Elias Laradi contributes to The Slice from Montreal, Canada