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The World Cup Is a Year Away. Who’s In?Rory SmithReporting on global soccer ⚽️Michel Euler/Associated PressWith Qatar 2022, arguably the most controversial World Cup in modern soccer history, now a year away, the field is starting to take shape.This is where things stand so far → More
The 19-year-old Canadian, who won 7-6 (3), 4-6, 6-4, becomes the youngest singles finalist at the U.S. Open since Serena Williams advanced at age 17 in 1999.Leylah Fernandez, the Canadian teen sensation, cruised into the finals of the U.S. Open Thursday night, knocking off Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus with an upset that might have been surprising had she not been doing this for the better part of a week.With Steve Nash, the N.B.A. Hall of Famer and Nets coach watching from her box, and all of Canada and seemingly all of New York in her corner, Fernandez, ranked 73rd, notched her fourth consecutive win over one of the world’s top-20 players. Her stunning run has included victories over the second, third, fifth and 16th seeded players in the tournament. She beat Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber, the winners of a combined seven Grand Slam singles titles, then knocked off Elina Svitolina, who is considered one of the best players never to have won a Grand Slam tournament.Then came Sabalenka, one of the world’s biggest hitters and its second-ranked player. At 23, she appeared poised this year to take the next step in her development. She has never made a Grand Slam final but lost in the semifinals at Wimbledon and backed that up with another trip to the final four at the U.S. Open.Aryna Sabalenka serving during the match.Ben Solomon for The New York TimesIn Fernandez, though, Sabalenka ran into a player who seems to have convinced herself that she cannot be beaten, that if she can just keep getting the ball back over the net with her brand of power and spin and guile, somehow the match will break her way.It took two hours and 21 minutes for that moment to come, when she finished off a 7-6 (3), 4-6, 6-4 win, thanks to two ill-timed double faults from Sabalenka and one last error sailing off the court.“I don’t know how I did that,” Fernandez said, when asked how she had pulled it all off during her on-court interview moments after the final point made the crowd explode one last time.Fernandez became the second Canadian teenager in three years to make the final of the U.S. Open, following in the footsteps of Bianca Andreescu, who beat Serena Williams to win the championship in 2019.Like Andreescu, Fernandez has shot to the top seemingly out of nowhere. Though she had been inching her way up the rankings for the past three years, she had given little indication that she was on the verge of a breakthrough of this magnitude.Fernandez came out jittery, lost her serve and was down 3-0 in the first set. Before long though, she had settled down and proved to be the perfect foil for Sabalenka’s high-octane game that leaves little margin for error. When Sabalenka doesn’t connect, she beats balls into the bottom half of the net or watches them sail five and six feet beyond the baseline, then flails her arms in frustration.There was plenty of that on Thursday evening at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Sabalenka seemed to be making steady progress with a 4-2 lead in the first set, but then made a series of errors to let Fernandez back into the set, including a double fault on game point.At the crucial moment of the first-set tiebreaker, with Fernandez holding a 4-3 lead, Sabalenka missed badly on an easy overhead, double-faulted, then bounced a Fernandez serve on set point into the net.The second set looked like it was going to be a near carbon copy of the first. An early break for Sabalenka, then sloppiness to let Fernandez back into the frame. But then Fernandez cracked in the ninth game, giving Sabalenka a chance to serve out the set. She whirled her arms, begging for some support from the pro-Fernandez crowd.Fans getting into the match as it began to get close.Ben Solomon for The New York TimesOn to the third set they went, trading service games into midway point, when Fernandez, holding a 3-2 lead, let Sabalenka hit herself into trouble, then blocked one of Sabalenka’s hardest serves of the night and watched Sabalenka’s shot float long. But Fernandez struggled with the prosperity, letting Sabalenka break her right back, and a game later knot the score at 4-4.But Fernandez stayed cool, and a game later let Sabalenka take care of business for her. Eventually, things work out for this teenager, at least at this U.S. Open.She will play the winner of the match between Emma Raducanu of Britain and Maria Sakkari of Greece in the final Saturday afternoon. More
The semifinalists are part of a new wave of Canadian tennis stars who are changing the image of the game in their country and reflecting its increased diversity.Canada’s tennis success story continues to add chapters at breakneck pace with Felix Auger-Aliassime and Leylah Fernandez having advanced to the semifinals of the U.S. Open for the first time in their short careers.Auger-Aliassime, 21, and Fernandez, 19, are part of a new wave of Canadian tennis stars who are changing the image of the game in their country, reflecting its increased diversity.Their breakthrough in New York marks the first time Canada has had two singles semifinalists at the U.S. Open. It comes after other Canadian success at Grand Slams: Bianca Andreescu won the 2019 U.S. Open women’s singles title and Denis Shapovalov reached the men’s semifinals at Wimbledon this year.It remains a surprising tale. Canada, with its famously rugged winters, has a shortage of indoor courts and a dearth of junior players compared with more established tennis nations like the United States, France and Germany. Canada’s best athletes still tend to gravitate to ice hockey, soccer and other activities.The four young Canadian tennis stars all have at least one immigrant parent. Auger-Aliassime and Fernandez were born and raised in Montreal.“It’s great for Canada, great for Quebec,” Auger-Aliassime said on Tuesday. “I never thought a day like this would come: a little girl and a little boy from Montreal both at the same time in the semifinals of the U.S. Open. It’s special for us. I hope the people back home appreciate the moment also. We do a lot.”Auger-Aliassime is biracial. His mother, Marie Auger, is French Canadian, and his father, Sam Aliassime, immigrated to Canada from Togo. Fernandez’s mother, Irene, was born in Toronto to parents originally from the Philippines. Fernandez’s father and coach, Jorge, immigrated to Canada from Ecuador at age 4 with his family.Andreescu, born near Toronto, is the only child of Romanian immigrants. Shapovalov, born in Tel Aviv, is the son of a Russian father and Ukrainian mother.Auger-Aliassume talking with Carlos Alcaraz after Alcaraz retired in the second set of their quarterfinal match.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times“I think we all share that immigrant story,” Andreescu said in a recent interview. “I can definitely relate to a lot of people in Canada, because I think it’s very multicultural, and I think we can all be an inspiration that way.”Sports remain an on-ramp to success in many cultures for immigrant families, and professional tennis is full of examples. The retired American star Andre Agassi is the son of an Iranian Olympic boxer; Michael Chang, another retired American star, is the son of immigrants from Taiwan. Alexander Zverev, a semifinalist at this year’s U.S. Open, was born in Germany to Russian parents.“I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all,” Jorge Fernandez said in an interview on Wednesday. “Immigrant families bring a lot of hard work with them to the court. They bring a lot of toughness and willingness to sacrifice. They may not know anything about the sport, but they know what it means to work hard.”Jorge Fernandez was a professional soccer player, not a competitive tennis player, and has taught himself about the game, much like Richard Williams, the father of Serena and Venus Williams. Auger-Aliassime’s father is a tennis coach who has an academy in Quebec City.Jorge Fernandez said he and Sam Aliassime would compare notes and exchange ideas as they watched their children practice and compete in Montreal.“We would share our experiences, our hopes and frustrations,” Fernandez said. “I think both being immigrants, we have a lot in common.”But while Jorge Fernandez has remained his daughter’s primary coach, moving the family to Florida for training purposes, Sam Aliassime ceded the coaching role to others. Auger-Aliassime has trained since his early teens with Tennis Canada, the sport’s national governing body. His coaches were former professionals like Frédéric Niemeyer and the Frenchmen Guillaume Marx and Frédéric Fontang.Fontang remains his primary coach, and in December, Auger-Aliassime also began working with Toni Nadal, Rafael Nadal’s uncle and former coach. Toni Nadal has been in Auger-Aliassime’s corner and player box in New York as a coaching consultant.“I think he’s helped me improve maybe the consistency of my game, the quality of my movement, my focus,” said Auger-Aliassime, who will face No. 2 seed Daniil Medvedev on Friday. “On one part you have Frédéric, my main coach, who has been with me since I’m very young and that knows every aspect of myself and my game. He has the long-term vision for me. You have Toni that has been in the places that we want to go one day, winning these big tournaments, being No. 1 in the world. I think he brings that belief that this is something doable.”Canadian players also have been showing each other what is possible. Eugenie Bouchard was ranked as high as No. 5 in 2014, reaching the semifinals of the Australian Open and French Open and the final of Wimbledon. Big-serving Milos Raonic, born in Montenegro to immigrant parents, was ranked as high as No. 3 in 2016, defeating Roger Federer at Wimbledon before losing in the final to Andy Murray.“I think they’re all pushing each other, and I think that’s part of it,” said Sylvain Bruneau, the former coach of Bouchard and Andreescu, who is the director of women’s professional tennis at Tennis Canada. “I think Genie helped Bianca to do well by doing what she did and showing that you can be Canadian and be at a national tennis center and develop your game there and have some success. And I think Bianca has done that for Leylah. And I know there is this feeling that everything can be achieved. Fifteen years ago, we wanted to become a tennis nation and to get really serious about development. Big resources were put in place, and I think we are now seeing the benefits.”Fernandez during her quarterfinal victory.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesTennis Canada has not helped all the players to the same degree. Shapovalov and Fernandez have often worked independently, but Michael Downey, the president of Tennis Canada, said the federation has provided some level of support — be it financial or in the form of wild cards and training opportunities — to all four of its young stars.“I think all this just reinforces that there is no one way for a great player to be developed,” Downey said in an interview on Wednesday. “As a federation we are there as a facilitator whether that’s developing hands-on with Felix or helping in other ways.”The pandemic has been a challenge. The National Bank Open tennis tournament remains Tennis Canada’s major source of funding, and the men’s and women’s events were both canceled last year, leading to a deficit of 8 million Canadian dollars, according to Downey.“That is a lot of money to a small federation,” Downey said. “We didn’t have the kind of reserves to manage us through that kind of loss.”There were layoffs and major cutbacks in the player development program, and the federation took out a loan of 20 million Canadian dollars. But the National Bank Open was staged this year with limited attendance, and Downey said Tennis Canada will make a profit this year.“That will make it an easier road for us to 2022 and 2023,” he said. “But at the end of the day, part of the reason we’re doing better financially is we haven’t been investing in tennis development. We’re only spending at 40 percent of what we normally spend, and we really want to ratchet it back up.”Downey, like the Canadian players, is well aware that this is a breakthrough moment for tennis in Canada, one that it is important not to squander.A sign of the times is that while this is the first year that Canada has had two U.S. Open singles semifinalists, this is the first time that the United States, the traditional tennis powerhouse, did not even have a quarterfinalist in singles.“Who could ever have imagined that?” Bruneau said.David Waldstein More
Canada’s high-performance tennis program is achieving its goal of producing elite players, several of whom have advanced at the U.S. Open.The Canadian flag is everywhere at the U.S. Open, where Canadian players are winning on courts across the grounds and beyond.On Saturday, Bianca Andreescu won in Louis Armstrong Stadium while Denis Shapovalov waited to play there in the night session. On Friday, Felix Auger-Aliassime beat Roberto Bautista Agut in Armstrong, Vasek Pospisil won at doubles on Court 10, and three Canadian girls won junior qualifying matches at the Cary Leeds Center in the Bronx.The biggest win took place in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday, when Leylah Fernandez, a French Open junior champion two years ago, beat No. 3 seed Naomi Osaka to muscle her way toward the front of Canada’s booming tennis program, an assembly line of players that includes four men in the top 60 and six girls in the top 100 of the junior rankings.Not bad for a country with about a tenth of the population of the United States. But Canadian players are pouring over the border and making New York their temporary home.“I’m just glad that there’s so many Canadians going deep in this tournament,” Fernandez said shortly after she had showed the steely nerve it took to oust the defending champion in the world’s biggest tennis stadium. Fernandez, who turns 19 on Monday, is the latest young Canadian to captivate the tennis world, following in the path of Andreescu, who won the 2019 U.S. Open; Auger-Aliassime; Shapovalov; and, before them, Milos Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard.A country of about 37 million, Canada has made a concerted effort over the past several years to develop elite players, and it is working. Most of them pass through Tennis Canada’s high-performance development program, and many were either immigrants themselves or the Canadian-born children of immigrants.Fernandez belongs to that list, too, although her route is unique. Her father and coach, Jorge Fernandez, was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and moved to Montreal with his family when he was a small boy. Fernandez’s mother, Irene Exevea, is of Filipino descent from Toronto.Jorge Fernandez describes himself as a former journeyman professional soccer player in the lower levels of the game, mostly in Latin America. He never knew anything about tennis until his daughter showed interest as a schoolgirl.“She played some soccer in Montreal,” the elder Fernandez said in a telephone interview Saturday, “but I didn’t want her to just follow me. I wanted her to find her own passion.”That turned out to be tennis, but Leylah struggled to gain the favor of the local tennis associations. She was part of a Quebec-based development program for a while, but it dropped her, Jorge said, in part because she was tiny. She still wanted to play.“I told her, ‘It’s OK, we’ll do it ourselves,’” her father said.They plunged ahead on their own, and soon enough, Leylah Fernandez was tearing through the ranks of her age group and several years above it, winning so many tournaments that Tennis Canada officials finally invited her to train with them.But as often happens when parents hand their children over to tennis federations, there were differences of opinion, especially over how much Leylah should play. Ultimately, Jorge Fernandez took his daughter out of the program, although amicably, he says.“I told them we would meet up again,” he explained, “and look, we have.”He continued: “It’s OK to have disagreements. We all wanted the same thing, which is for Leylah to be successful. We just had a different idea of how to do it, for a while. But they have been doing great work. I tip my hat to them with all the success they have had with so many Canadians going through the program.”Bianca Andreescu playing on Saturday.Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockLeylah’s mother thought their daughter would be one of those successes, too. According to Jorge Fernandez, Exevea thought he was crazy to remove his daughter from a program that provided free coaching and more. But he was committed to doing it himself, so he and Leylah and her younger sister, Bianca Jolie, who is 17, continued to train on their own in Montreal. (The oldest, Jodeci, is a dentist in Ohio and did not play tennis competitively).That left the chief bread-winning duties to Exevea, who, unlike Jorge Fernandez, has a university degree. She moved to California so she could earn U.S. dollars and stayed there for three years while Jorge tapped into his knowledge as a former professional athlete to coach his daughters.“Those were difficult years, because they only saw their mother maybe two times a year,” Jorge said. “We finally decided to move to Florida. It’s the Mecca of tennis, and we could have the whole family together again.”To learn the art of tennis and coaching it, Jorge Fernandez immersed himself in the sport, reading texts and watching videos on the internet. His goal was to cultivate a balance between work and fun to ensure that Leylah never got burned out. He taught his daughter, who is 5 feet 6 inches, to study Justine Henin, who is listed at 5-6¾, because it seemed like an appropriate blueprint for success.Despite her size, Leylah Fernandez is a potent ball striker. Her father claims that, pound for pound, Leylah is “the best power hitter on the tour,” and she derives confidence from her strength. Even before she took the court against Osaka, she said she knew she could beat the four-time major champion.“From a very young age, I knew I was able to beat anyone,” she said Friday night, before noting that it was past her bedtime.When she won the French Open junior title in 2019, Leylah Fernandez asked her father if they could celebrate at McDonald’s. Always diligent about nutrition, and in a city known for its culinary expertise, Fernandez chose the fast food restaurant as a way to splurge. Her father agreed.“It was just the two of us,” Jorge said. “It was sweet, but at the same time, the whole family should have been there. It’s one of the difficult things of the tennis life, all the travel.”Jorge Fernandez could not attend his daughter’s victory over Osaka. He was in Florida attending to business. But before she took the court, Leylah called him for the strategic game plan, and he was true to his ethos.“He told me to go on the court, have fun,” she said, and she followed the advice perfectly, flashing a brilliant smile during a relaxed but exuberant speech after the match.For a time, her family had debated moving to Ecuador so that the girls could play for that country. Instead, they retained their loyalty to Canada, and Leylah Fernandez plays on the Canadian team for the Billie Jean King Cup. On Sunday, she will play No. 16 seed Angelique Kerber, a three-time Grand Slam tournament champion, for a spot in the quarterfinals.Already, she and her compatriots have helped raise the profile of Canadian tennis a notch higher.“Our goal here is just to have fun on court,” she said, “to do our best. Hopefully we can inspire kids in Canada to keep going.” More
The young Canadian, who plays Novak Djokovic in their men’s singles semifinal on Friday, is expected to give the world No. 1 his toughest test yet on the grass.WIMBLEDON, England — As she coached him in Toronto as a child, Tessa Shapovalova told her young son not to mind the balls arcing over his head when he went to the net. Someday, she said, he would be tall enough to reach them. More
The young Canadians advanced on Monday to the men’s singles quarterfinals, one in easy straight sets, and the other in a gutty five-set victory. It feels like 2014.WIMBLEDON, England — As the Montreal Canadiens, Canada’s hope for hockey’s Stanley Cup, faced elimination across an ocean, the compatriots Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime broke through to their first Wimbledon quarterfinals within hours of each other on Monday afternoon. More
The shot by the Canadian golfer was the sixth hole in one on No. 6 in tournament history.AUGUSTA, Ga. — The old man working near No. 2 knew. He had to have known, because everyone knew.The roar on Saturday afternoon had all the hallmarks of a classic moment being made at the Masters Tournament: the sharp lift of noise as something sensational unfolded somewhere on the 345 acres, the percussion when the possible became a certainty, and then the fading echoes among the pines.“Which hole?” the man asked.The answer, it turned out, was the sixth, where Corey Conners had picked up a pair of strokes with a hole in one, the sixth there in the history of the tournament at Augusta National Golf Club. His tee shot with an eight-iron, coming right after a bogey, had landed just beyond the bunker. The ball took three bounces, each one smaller than the last. Then physics took over in a week when Augusta’s greens have been compared to glass.It took perhaps four seconds for the ball to enter the cup from the time it struck the green — so fast that Conners had scarcely moved in the tee box. He raised his arms in exultation. He leaned backward and pumped his right fist. He accepted congratulations from Collin Morikawa, his partner for the day.“It didn’t seem like the wind was helping as much as I anticipated, but, fortunately, it flew far enough,” Conners, who entered Saturday at two under par on the tournament, said afterward. “I was trying to fly it somewhere over the bunker and get it to go in, get it to go close to the hole.”“I think I hit the pin with a little bit of steam,” he added, “but it was right in the middle, so pretty special moment.”He finished Saturday with a 68, four under par, and will be in contention when the tournament holds its final round on Sunday, thanks in no small part to his star turn on No. 6.“Every shot makes a big difference,” said Charles Coody, who won the Masters in 1971 and used a five-iron for a hole in one on No. 6 the following year. “He’s been playing well of late, so I’m quite sure he’ll have a good chance.”Augusta National’s No. 16 surrenders far more holes in one than any other on the course, and it gave up one on Thursday to Tommy Fleetwood. But the sixth hole has seen more than any spot but the 16th.“It’s fairly level over there when you’re hitting from the tee and everything,” Coody said of the sixth hole on Saturday, when he watched the tournament on television. “You’re hitting into just a little of the upslope, which helps you hold the green a little better.”Conners, a 29-year-old Canadian with a single P.G.A. Tour victory to his name, has had, like so many golfers, a complicated relationship with Augusta National. In his first appearance, in 2015, he missed the cut but showed promise: a first-round 80, a second-round 69. Four years later, he tied for 46th after a misery-filled final round. In November, when the pandemic-delayed Masters was played, he scored a 65 in the second round, crucial to tying for 10th in the end.This year’s conditions were far different.“It’s got a lot more speed to it,” he said of the course on Tuesday. “The greens are rolling quicker. Had to adjust some of the notes in my book to play a lot more break in the greens, and certain spots around the green where you maybe had a chance in November, you don’t have much of a chance right now.”He had just finished a practice round with Mike Weir, the 2003 Masters winner and the only son of Canada ever to win one of golf’s major tournaments. Weir regaled Conners with tales of victory — and offered a few tips, one of the traditions of the Masters.But on Saturday, the afternoon after the cut, Weir was no longer in the field. It was Conners’s turn to stir a roar. More
