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Canadian tennis players experienced another tough season finale today as Canada was eliminated from the Davis Cup with a 2-0 loss to Germany in the quarterfinals of the global men’s team championship in Spain.
With top singles player Felix Auger-Aliassime missing the knockout stage for the second straight year after leading Canada to its first Davis Cup title in 2022, 86th-ranked Gabriel Diallo lost in straight sets to No. 88 Daniel Altmaier before No. 56 Denis Shapovalov fell 4-6, 7-5, 7-6 (5) to No. 43 Jan-Lennard Struff to complete a German sweep of the best-of-three tie.
Canada’s quick exit came three days after the Canadian women’s team also got swept in the quarterfinals of their Davis Cup equivalent, the Billie Jean King Cup, played at the same indoor arena in Malaga, Spain. Leylah Fernandez could not replicate her magic from last year, when she went 4-0 in singles play at the 12-team Finals to help Canada hoist the Cup for the first time. Fernandez and Rebecca Marino both lost in straight sets as Canada fell easily to Great Britain after a first-round bye.
As the 2024 tennis season comes to a close this week, Canada has just two players ranked in the top 50 in singles. Auger-Aliassime has slipped to 29th — down from a career-high sixth as recently as March 2023 — while Fernandez has fallen to 31st after reaching No. 13 in 2022. Neither player won a tournament this year, and their best result at a Grand Slam was Auger-Aliassime’s modest fourth-round run at the French Open.
WATCH | Canada eliminated in Davis Cup quarterfinals:
After Montreal’s Gabriel Diallo lost to Daniel Altmaier in the opening rubber of the Davis Cup Final quarterfinals in Malaga, Spain, Jan-Lennard Struff beat Denis Shapovalov of Richmond Hill, Ont., 4-6, 7-5, 7-6(5) to eliminate Canada.
The most exciting Canadian tennis moments of 2024 came at the Olympics in Paris. Auger-Aliassime reached the men’s semifinals as the 13th seed before getting waxed by No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz of Spain, then lost the bronze-medal match to Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti in the maximum three sets. But Felix didn’t leave empty-handed, teaming with Gabby Dabrowski to win the bronze in mixed doubles — Canada’s first Olympic tennis medal since Daniel Nestor and Sebastien Lareau won the men’s doubles gold in 2000.
Dabrowski also had an excellent year with her doubles teammate Erin Routliffe — a Canadian who switched to representing New Zealand (her country of birth) a few years ago. The 2023 U.S. Open champs reached the final at Wimbledon, won a smaller grass-court event in England and were the runners-up at three other tournaments (including the top-tier Miami Open and Canada’s National Bank Open) to earn a spot in the lucrative WTA Finals earlier this month in Saudi Arabia. They won the eight-team event, splitting $1.125 million US. That’s the biggest cash prize of the year for women’s doubles.
Dabrowski, now ranked third in the world in doubles, did not get to take the court at the Billie Jean King Cup Finals as Fernandez was unable to force a deciding doubles match against Great Britain on Sunday.
The British went on to lose their semifinal 2-1 to Slovakia, who today got swept in the championship tie by Italy. World No. 4 Jasmine Paolini clinched her country’s first women’s Cup since 2013 with a 6-2, 6-1 win over 43rd-ranked Rebecca Sramkova.
The Davis Cup quarterfinals continue Thursday with the United States vs. Australia (4 a.m. ET) and defending champion Italy vs. Argentina (11 a.m. ET). Germany will face the Netherlands in Friday’s semifinal after the Dutch sent Rafael Nadal into retirement with a 2-1 victory over Spain yesterday.
You can watch every Davis Cup tie live on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem. Here’s the streaming schedule and here are the latest results.
