Monday Digest: Galarneau’s Granby Glory Leads Big Canadian Week

While the week after Wimbledon is quieter on the main tours, the Canadians were making noise on home soil. 

In terms of hardware, it was one of the busiest weeks of the year for the Canadians, the most notable being a career-first for a local favourite in Quebec.  

Here’s what you need to know. 

Under the Radar: Another Home Winner in Granby 

For the second year in a row, a Canadian man won their first ATP Challenger title at the National Bank Championships in Granby, QC. 

Last year, it was Gabriel Diallo breaking through. This year, it was his Davis Cup teammate Alexis Galarneau who won the biggest title of his career to-date on home soil.  

The Laval, QC-native was the lone seeded player to reach the quarter-finals and took full advantage of the draw that opened up for him, capping off the run with a three-set win in the final. 

There were nearly two Canadian champions in Granby as Katherine Sebov reached the women’s singles final, beating countrywoman Rebecca Marino in the semis, but lost to third seed Kayla Day 7-5 in the third set. 

It was Sebov’s second final in Granby, but also her first ITF W100 final, making it the biggest final of the Torontonian’s career to-date. 

In total, four Canadian women reached the quarter-finals of that event. Along with Sebov and Marino, Marina Stakusic and Cadence Brace both got to the last eight. 

Rob Shaw had a big week at the ITF Swiss Open, winning the quad doubles title with Heath Davidson and reaching the singles final. 

The victory was long overdue for the Kelowna-native, who had reached the doubles final at his previous three events, including Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, but had been defeated all three times. Shaw and Davidson did not drop a set in Geneva. 

Shaw is still seeking his first singles title of 2023. The Swiss Open final was his second title match of the year. 

Juan Carlos Aguilar won his fourth ITF doubles title of the year, winning a pair of tiebreaks in the final of the M15 in Rochester, NY, with Argentinian partner Ignacio Monzon. 

In Case You Missed It: Diallo Still Searching First Win 

Most of the tour’s big names took the week off after the season’s third major, but there was plenty of action with five tournaments taking place on two surfaces on the ATP and WTA Tours. 

While the Canadian focus was in Granby, Gabriel Diallo was the lone Canuck competing last week, playing just his second match on the ATP Tour in Newport, the final grass event of the year. 

Unfortunately, he was defeated in his first-round match by Kevin Anderson, who was playing his first match since coming out of retirement. 

The highlight of the week was in Bastad, Sweden, where the only two Top 10 players competing lived up to their billing, with No. 7 Andrey Rublev defeating No. 4 Casper Ruud in the final. 

Bastad also saw the first tour-level match win for Leo Borg, son of legend Bjorn Borg. 

Read also: Milos Raonic – Canada’s Tennis Trailblazer

There were three players who took advantage of the lack of stars to claim their first titles last week; Pedro Chacin in Gstaad, Qinwen Zheng in Palermo, and Maria Timofeeva in Budapest. 

Last week also saw the return of the Hopman Cup for the first time since 2019, being played on clay in France. 

Recently-crowned Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz was in action for Spain and won both his singles matches, but he and Rebeka Masarova lost both their doubles matches and were eliminated in the group stage. 

Holger Rune was the only other Top 10 player competing for Denmark but lost both his singles matches. 

Croatia, featuring Borna Coric and Donna Vekic, won the title over Switzerland, who boasted the two lowest-ranked players in the competition: WTA No. 157 Celina Naef and ATP No. 160 Leandro Riedi. 

What to Watch: Hard Court Summer Begins 

Last week, the schedule consisted of a Grass-Clay hybrid. This week, it is clay and hard courts as both tours continue the surface shift for the summer. 

It is another quiet week in terms of star power, but one of the game’s brightest lights is shining in her hometown as Iga Swiatek leads the field at the hard-court WTA 250 event in Warsaw, Poland.  

Swiatek is the only Top 10 player on the WTA circuit competing this week. She could have a French Open final rematch against the second seed in Warsaw, Karolina Muchova. 

The other two events on the WTA Tour this week are both clay-court 250s; in Hamburg where Donna Vekic is the top seed, and in Lausanne where Elisabetta Cocciaretto leads a field that also includes rising star Mirra Andreeva. 

On the men’s side, Casper Ruud and Andrey Rublev will be looking to meet in a second final in as many weeks as they are the top two seeds in the men’s Hamburg draw. Over in Umag, Croatia, Jiri Lehecka is the top seed. 

In North America, the summer hard court swing officially begins with the Atlanta Open, where world No. 9 Taylor Fritz is the top seed. Defending champion Alex de Minaur is the second seed. 

Over its 12-year history, only Americans and Australians have won the title in Atlanta, including six titles for John Isner, who seeks No. 7 this week. This year, 16 of the 28 spots in the draw belong to those two nations. 

No Canadians are competing on either tour this week.  

You can follow the Canadians in action every week here.