Bum Knees, Stress Fractures and Mental Anguish. Oh, Canada.
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.
Every 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 (Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime), stress fractures (Leylah Fernandez) and the mental anguish (Milos Raonic and Andreescu) 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 Raonic to show why there had been so much fuss in the first place. Both came back from a set down to win in four sets, giving Shapovalov 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 Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard nearly go all the way on the Wimbledon grass.
Source: The New York Times
