
Photo : Pascal Ratthe
It is Davis Cup week and several members of Team Canada presented by IGA will be arriving in Montreal fresh off strong performances on the ATP Challenger Tour. The Canadians posted some encouraging results over the last week, including a doubles title for Canada’s possible pair and a victory over a projected Hungarian opponent.
Play gets underway at IGA Stadium on Saturday.
Here’s what you need to know.
What to Watch: Team Canada at Home Again
For the second year in a row, Montreal is hosting Team Canada’s first Davis Cup tie of the year. The Canadians will host Hungary in the Qualifiers 1st Round this weekend at IGA Stadium.
Like last year’s tie against the Republic of Korea, Gabriel Diallo will be called upon to lead the Canadian squad in his hometown. Alexis Galarneau, Liam Draxl, and Vasek Pospisil are all returning for their second home tie in as many years, while Cleeve Harper rounds out the squad and will be participating in his first Davis Cup tie.
CLICK HERE to learn more about Team Canada.
The Canadians will face off with a Hungarian team led by Fabian Maroszan and Marton Fucsovics. The tie will be best-of-five matches with two singles matches being played on Saturday, followed by a doubles match and up to two singles matches on Sunday. Under the new format introduced for 2025, a victory would send the winning nation into the Qualifiers 2nd Round in September.
CLICK HERE for everything you need to know about the 2025 Davis Cup Qualifiers 1st Round in Montreal.
On the main tour this week, Félix Auger-Aliassime is the second seed at the ATP 250 event in Montpellier, France. He has a first-round bye and will meet either Stan Wawrinka or Arthur Cazaux, who he beat in the second round of this same event last year, in his opening match. His first potential seeded opponent is No. 8 Yunchaokete Bu in the quarter-finals.
Auger-Aliassime reached the semifinals at this tournament a year ago. If he repeats the feat, he could face No. 3 seed Flavio Cobolli in the final four. Andrey Rublev is the top seed and a potential finals opponent.
Rebecca Marino is the lone Canadian woman playing on the WTA main tour this week, competing at the 250 event in Singapore. She will face fourth seed Xinyu Wang in the first round.
Under the Radar: Davis Cup Implications in Oeiras
The ATP Challenger event in Oeiras, Portugal, last week has added some intrigue to Canada’s upcoming Davis Cup tie against Hungary in Montreal.
Liam Draxl continued his hot run, reaching the singles final and winning the doubles title with Cleeve Harper, who was added to Team Canada on Monday. The victory was their first doubles title of the year but fourth on the Challenger Tour since last September sixth overall as a team.
They defeated top seeds Matwe Middelkoop and Denys Molchanov 10-6 in a match tiebreak in the final. With the win, both Canadian men are now inside the Top 130 of the ATP doubles rankings and are firmly established as the nation’s top two doubles players.
In singles, Draxl reached his second Challenger Tour final of the year, having also reached the title match at the first Challenger in Oeiras earlier in the month. The young Canadian got into the draw as a qualifier and knocked off the third seed Jesper de Jong in the first round. He went on to defeat Davis Cup teammate Alexis Galarneau in the semifinal before falling in the final to Alexander Blockx of Belgium in straight sets.
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The victory moved Draxl into the Top 200 of the ATP singles rankings for the first time in his career. He also only sits five spots behind Galarneau, who is the second-highest-ranked Canadian on the Davis Cup squad this week in Montreal. Draxl’s victory over his countryman in the semifinals could make for an interesting decision as to who will play as Canada’s No. 2 singles player this weekend behind Gabriel Diallo.
Galarneau himself made a case for getting the start at Davis Cup by knocking off the tournament’s top seed and a potential opponent this weekend, Hungary’s Marton Fucsovics, in straight sets. Fucsovics is expected to be the Hungarian No. 2 during the Davis Cup tie and would likely play either Galarneau or Draxl in the final singles match if the tie goes the distance.
Canadian women acquitted themselves well at an ITF W75 event in Vero Beach, Florida, last week, with Carson Branstine, Kayla Cross, and Katherine Sebov all reaching the singles quarter-finals. Only Branstine got to the semis, where she lost to the eventual champion Solana Sierra in three sets.
Branstine and Cross will be joined by Cadence Brace, Carol Zhao, and the undefeated-in-2025 Victoria Mboko this week at a W75 in Rome, Georgia. There is also a quartet of Canadian men competing at an ATP Challenger in Cleveland, Ohio.
In Case You Missed It: Semifinal Finishes in Melbourne
Only two Canadians made it to the second week of the Australian Open and both saw their runs end at the same stage.
Rob Shaw was competing in both the quad wheelchair singles and doubles in Melbourne. He lost in the first round of the singles to world No. 2 Niels Vink and then went out in the semifinals to the eventual champions Andy Lapthorne and Sam Schroder in doubles alongside Heath Davidson.
Read also: Canadians crash out of Australian Open singles draw
Gabriela Dabrowski’s 2025 Australian Open ended in a similar way as 2024. She and Erin Routliffe were beaten in the semifinals by Jelena Ostapenko, who this time around was competing with doubles veteran Su-Wei Hsieh.
Click here for more news and results from the ATP and WTA Tours.
You can follow the Canadians in action every week here.
Tickets for the Davis Cup Qualifiers 1st Round tie between Canada and Hungary are now on sale. Join us February 1 and 2 at IGA Stadium in Montreal, as the Canadian team begins their quest for the 2025 Davis Cup Final 8. To access tickets at early-bird pricing, click here.