It may be a little hard to remember, with all the injuries, career detours and mystifying losses, but there was a time when everything seemed possible for Canadian tennis.
Much time a tennis fan looked up, it seemed, another wildly talented or gritty Canadian had made a Grand Slam final. Bianca Andreescu even won one, beating Serena Williams in the 2019 U.S. Open when she was still a teenager, playing with a style so creative she left tennis aesthetes drooling.
Lately, with all the bum knees, stress fractures and the mental anguish that so many players struggle with these days, even Fernandez’s improbable run to the 2021 U.S. Open final can feel like it was a long time ago.
And then there was a day like Wednesday at Wimbledon, with the rain finally going away long enough for outdoor tennis to happen, for Shapovalov and Sonic to show why there had been so much fuss in the first place. Both cam's back from a set down to win in four sets, giving Shape a chance to reminisce about what it had meant to him to be a junior player from a country known mostly for its prowess in sports with ice (hockey and curling) and watching Sonic and Eugenie Bouchard nearly go all the way on the Wimbledon grass.
“It kind of put a real belief in mine and Felix’s eyes that it’s possible as a Canadian,” Shape said, after beating A lot of Moldova 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 in a match that began on Monday. “And I’m sure with the generations, you know, following me, Felix, Bianca. Leylah, I’m sure there’s much more belief in the country, that it is possible even if the country is cold or is mostly wintertime.”
Apparently, Canadians missed the string of champions that Sweden, hardly a temperate locale, produced during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, such as Borg, Mats Wilder and Stefan Hedberg.
Shape and Sonic, who played and won his first match at a Grand Slam tournament in two and a half years Monday, beating Denis Novak of Austria, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 7-6(5), 6-1, will be back at it on Thursday. Both men will play second-round matches, as will Fernandez. Andres will be out there, too, finally playing her first-round match against Anna Bondar of Hungary.
Lassie, who has been dealing with a sore knee all year, lost in the first round at the All England Club for a second consecutive year. The nagging injury and the latest loss count as major disappointments for Lassie, who broke out in his late teens and whose powerful serve and movement should allow him to excel on grass.
But a Wimbledon schedule filled with Canadians is what the nation’s higher-ups in the sport were shooting for when they set out to make Canada a top-level tennis country nearly 20 years ago. Other than long, cold winters, Canada seemed to have everything a country needed to achieve big things in tennis — wealth, diversity and a commitment to spend money on building facilities and importing top coaches.
It built a tennis center in Montreal and satellite facilities in other major cities, and began to focus on developing young children and teenagers. It hired Louis Borgia, a leading tennis mind from France who was Borg’s hitting partner, to oversee player development.
Blessed with the good fortune of players with natural talent and parents willing to support it, Canada had Bouchard and Sonic rolling by the mid-2010s and Shape, Andres and Lassie tearing up the junior rankings, with Fernandez not far behind.
The success — last year Shapovalov and Lassie led Canada to its first Davis Cup title — and the struggles have bred a camaraderie among the players. They know when the others are playing, even when they are not in the same tournament.
“I’m guilty of following the results of all my fellow Canadians,” said Fernandez, who remembers just a few years ago seeing Lassie training a few courts down from her in Montreal and thinking, “Oh, this is inspiring.”
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