Canadians Struggle (Again) in Cincinnati
This week's edition of The Canadian Corner we focus our attention to Cincinnati, Ohio and the Western and Southern Open being held at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio.
5 Canadians in Cinci
We had five Canadians in action featuring Denis Shapovalov, Felix Auger Aliassime, Bianca Andreescu and Gaby Dabrowksi and Leylah Fernandez.
Fernandez was in the qualies draw but failed to qualify for the main draw losing in the final round.
It wasn’t a good week for Canadian tennis as Bianca Andreescu and Denis Shapovalov lost their opening matches. Andreescu was upset by the Czech Karolina Muchova and will head into the US Open with very little preparation or match wins.
Shapovalov lost a tight three set match to Benoit Paire, the tricky Frenchman and after the match said he was very disappointed with the way he played and seemed frustrated with the way he played.
As for Felix Auger Aliassime he made it all the way to the quarterfinals of the main draw beating Marton Fucsovics, Karen Khachanov, and his good friend Matteo Berrettini before falling to the world number three Stefanos Tsitsipas in a tight three set battle. Overall a solid week with 3 good wins vs tough opponents for FAA.
Felix has now lost five straight to the Greek after beating him twice in a row in their first two meetings but can take confidence from the wins he had this week and take it to New York for the US Open.
Finally Gaby Dabrowski who has started a new doubles partnership with the Brazilian Luisa Stefani made the final of the WTA event for the third straight week after making the final in San Jose and Montreal.
Unfortunately they ended up losing to the doubles pairing of Samantha Stosur and Shuai Zhang 7-5, 6-3.
Canadians Move On To The Big Apple
The players will now take the week to travel to New York for the US Open, the final grand slam of the year and there are still a lot of questions to be asked.
Will Andreescu be able to go far and get a good result after struggling for most of the year, Can Felix improve on his previous result and make semi or a final ?
Will Denis be able to overcome a bad loss and put it behind him and focus on going even farther this year in the big apple.
The tournament gets going on August 30th at the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing, New York and we will be following all the Canadians in action.
Elias Laradi contributes to The Slice from Montreal, Canada