Wimbledon junior champion Shapovalov ready to face tennis elite at Rogers Cup
TORONTO — Denis Shapovalov sees himself playing in the top tennis tournaments in a couple of years, facing off against the likes of Canadian trailblazer Milos Raonic and German rising star Alexander Zverev.
Shapovalov will get a sneak peek of what that will be like later this month when the 2016 Wimbledon junior men’s champion joins a stacked field for the Rogers Cup in Toronto. Tennis Canada announced on Thursday that the Canadian will be a wild-card entry in the main draw of the Masters level tournament.
It will cap an impressive month for the 17-year-old from Richmond Hill, Ont., who picked up his first junior Grand Slam title at Wimbledon and moved up to No. 2 in the world junior men’s rankings. Shapovalov mill make his debut on the senior tour at next week’s Citi Open in Washington, D.C.
“In two or three years I’d like to be playing in the big tournaments that Milos is playing in,” Shapovalov said in a conference call on Thursday. “I hope to be in the same spot as Zverev. He’s been doing very well, and he’s only two years older than me.”