Vasek Pospisil is one of the most important Canadian tennis players of all time. The landscape of the sport in this country when the Vernon, BC-native turned pro in 2007 would be unrecognizable to Canadian tennis fans today, and that is in no small part due to Pospisil’s contributions.
On July 21, Pospisil announced that the upcoming National Bank Open in Toronto will be his final tournament as a professional tennis player. It will be the end of a remarkable 18-year career on the ATP Tour.
The 2010s was a transformative decade for tennis in Canada. Along with Milos Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard, who also announced her pending retirement after the National Bank Open, Pospisil helped Canada develop from a country that would occasionally produce a notable player, more often than not in doubles, into a nation churning out contenders.
On the eve of his retirement, let’s take a look back at the highlights of Vasek Pospisil’s career.
There’s No Place Like Wimbledon
Without question, the biggest tour victory of the Canadian’s career came in July 2014 at tennis’ most iconic venue.
Pospisil teamed up with American Jack Sock in the gentlemen’s doubles and “the boys who came from nowhere” went on a run for the ages. They upset three seeded teams, including second seeds Alexander Peya and Bruno Soares in the quarter-finals, on their way to the final.
Surely that’s where the run would end, as they found themselves up against the most successful men’s doubles team in history, (then) 13-time major champions Bob and Mike Bryan, the top seeds and defending champions.
But the magic was not about to run out for Pospisil and Sock. They caused one of the biggest upsets in recent doubles history, “beating the unbeatables” in five sets to win the Wimbledon title.
“We were playing so well. I had this feeling that it was meant to be. It’s incredible to get to say that you’re a Wimbledon champion for life,” Pospisil told Tennis Canada in a 2024 interview at the Davis Cup. “We were the boys from nowhere. I was Top 30 in singles at the time so I was on tour and playing at a high level, but we did come out of nowhere because we weren’t even sure if we were going to play at the tournament. I wasn’t really playing any doubles at the time. We were focused on singles. We just kind of decided to go for the title and it worked out.”
The victory made Pospisil just the third Canadian at the time to win a Grand Slam title in any discipline. He remains, as of July 2025, the most recent Canadian man to win a major title.
A year after his doubles victory, the British Columbian delivered the best singles result of his career at a major at the All-England Club, getting to the quarter-finals. He knocked off two seeds, No. 30 Fabio Fognini and No. 22 Viktor Troicki (from two sets down), winning three five-setters on his way to the last eight, where he lost to Andy Murray.
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In 2020, Pospisil went on another impressive run at a major, reaching the last sixteen at the US Open. He upset countryman Milos Raonic in the second round before taking out eighth seed Roberto Bautista Agut in five sets in round three. His run was stopped by Alex de Minaur in the fourth round.
An Upset for the Ages
In total, Pospisil scored seven wins over Top 10 opponents in his career, but none bigger than his 2017 upset of world No. 1 Murray in Indian Wells.
This was the first meeting between the Canadian and the Scot since their Wimbledon quarter-final nearly two years prior. Murray got off to a quick start, racing ahead 4-2 in the opening set, but Pospisil responded with four straight games to take it.
In the second set, the two went back and forth in a set full of cat-and-mouse rallies before Pospisil raced out to a big lead in the tiebreak. On match point, he fired a forehand winner crosscourt to shock the top seed.
It was, at the time, just the second win by a Canadian player over a sitting world No. 1.
Tour Success
Pospisil reached three ATP Tour singles finals in his career and, while he was unable to claim a title, the first was a match that will live forever in Canadian tennis lore.
The 2014 ATP 500 Washington final pitted Pospisil against countryman Raonic, the first and to-date only all-Canadian final on the ATP Tour. While Raonic was the victor in straight sets, the picture of the two Canadians holding the Canadian flag together in the American capital is one of the iconic images in Canadian tennis history.
He came close to scoring that elusive singles title in 2020 as he reached two finals that year. First, Pospisil lost to Gael Monfils in Lyon in February. Then at the Sofia Open in November, he came as close as he would get in a final at the ATP 250 event, losing a three-set thriller to a youngster going for his first title by the name of Jannik Sinner.
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Overall, Pospisil won 21 singles titles on the ATP Challenger (11) and ITF Tours (10). His final title came on home soil at the ATP Challenger Tour event in Drummondville in 2022.
While Pospisil had a good singles career, his best results came in doubles. He won seven ATP Tour-level doubles titles, including Wimbledon, and a further 17 ATP Challenger/ITF titles. He hit a career-high ranking of No. 4 in April 2015.
Pospisil added a Masters 1000 title in Indian Wells in 2015 with Sock. They beat the Bryans in the quarters and went on to defeat Simone Bolelli and Fabio Fognini in the final. Team "Pospisock" was one of the best tandems of the mid-2010s. Between 2014 and 2016, they reached nine finals, six of them at the Masters 1000 level, winning four titles together.
Captain Canada
For many Canadian fans, they will always think of Pospisil as someone who rose to the occasion when representing his country, whether it was in Davis Cup competition or playing at the National Bank Open.
CLICK HERE to read more about Pospisil’s best moments at the Canadian Masters 1000 tournament.
Following the retirement of Daniel Nestor in 2018, Pospisil took on the mantle of “Mr. Davis Cup” in Canada and was an integral part of the team that reached the final for the first time in 2019 and finally won the title in 2022. In total, the British Columbian participated in 35 Davis Cup ties, playing 60 matches.
Upon his retirement from Davis Cup in February, he ranked second in Canadian Davis Cup history in matches played, match wins, ties played and years played (all behind Nestor).
CLICK HERE to read about Pospisil’s Davis Cup highlights.
Thank you for everything, Vasek. Best of luck in your retirement.
