Canadians pull off upsets in Toronto
With the tennis world's biggest names gathering in Toronto this week, it might be easy to forget some of the Canadians who will also take the courts at the Rogers Cup; unless, of course, those Canadians continue to upset the big names.
Peter Polanksy along with Vasek Pospisil and Milos Raonic took down some stiff competition on Monday, upsetting three of the ATP’s top 25 in both singles and doubles play. Polanksy opened the night with a two-set win over no. 15 Jurgen Melzer while Pospisil and Roanic took down the world number one and two in Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in their doubles match.
"What I'm most proud of tonight is how I stayed focused in front of a big crowd at home," said Polanksy. "I just played my game throughout the match without too many nerves."
Polanksy unseated the Austrian 7-6, 6-4 in a match that ran just under two hours, with the first set taking over an hour to complete. It is the first time in seven years that a Canadian man has beaten a top 15 player on home court. The last was no. 314 ranked Simon Larose in his upset of German Gustavo Kuerten.
"It means a lot, especially for confidence," said Polanksy. "It's a huge confidence boost. Not only can I be close to these guys in practice, but in a match, I'm there with them, too. Mentally, I'm right there."
"I'm so proud of him," said Peter’s older sister, Nicole Polansky, who watched her brother from the stands. "He's such an inspiration for me. I'm just glad I could be a part of it."
The win is a big one for Polanksy who is returning to the tour after a sleepwalking incident resulted in him falling three storeys from a hotel window.
“When it happened, people were doubting if he would play again, or even walk again," Polansky's coach, Dean Coburn said in an interview last year. "It was a serious accident, life-threatening. Where he's come, it's unbelievable."
“I don't think about it too often," Polanksy told reporters after the match. "It doesn't bother me at all to talk about it."
Polanksy will go on to face Romanian Victor Hanescu.
Doubling-down
Less than two hours later, Canadians celebrated another big win in Toronto with Pospisil and Raonic’s 5-7, 6-3, 10-8 upset of Nadal and Djokovic.
"We knew we had to play a flawless match," said Pospisil. "And we did pretty much exactly that. We were already prepared to play a tough match and we followed our game plan successfully.”
But it wasn’t easy.
After dropping the first set, Pospisil and Raonic had to claw back in the second, winning the final three games before taking a 4-0 lead in the third. They earned four match points to stay at 9-5, but Nadal and Djokovic made them work, taking away three opportunities before the Canadian duo could close it out at 10-8.
But the Canadians did not have too long to celebrate their victory; the win advanced them to face Melzer and partner, Philipp Petzschner, where they dropped straight sets to the Wimbledon champs on Tuesday and will be watching the rest of the doubles tournament from the stands.
"They're tough," said Pospisil after the 6-4, 6-4 loss. "If you win Wimbledon, you're not an average doubles player. You have to be really, really good. So they obviously showed us today what they were made of."
"We did what we could," added Raonic. "They obviously knew about our match yesterday, and they didn't really take us lightly. Obviously, they won Wimbledon this year, and they've shown why they have a high level, why they won a Grand Slam and why they were better than us."
Despite the loss, Raonic says he accomplished what he came out to do.
"Our goal here is pretty much as ambassadors to Canada," he said. "The more players that we can get to come, the more people we can get going to take tennis lessons ... the more players that are going to come out in the future."
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