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.”

Shapovalov became only the third Canadian to win a junior Grand Slam singles title on Sunday when he came from a set down to beat Australia’s Alex De Minaur 4-6, 6-1, 6-3 in the final at the All England Club. He almost made it a Wimbledon sweep later that day when he and partner Felix Auger-Aliassime of Montreal fell in the doubles final.

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Canada’s talent pool is deep at the junior level in the wake of the breakout successes of Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard over the past few seasons. Auger-Aliassime is fourth in the men’s junior rankings and Bianca Andreescu is currently eighth on the women’s side.

“We have Milos, who’s at the top of his game right now and making finals at Wimbledon, and we have so many good juniors coming up,” Shapovalov said. “I just hope that the kids that are even younger than us look up to us and Milos and think that they can be at our level someday.

“Hopefully we’ll have a couple more Grand Slam champions in the future.”

Shapovalov knows he’ll have to make some big adjustments when he plays against the ATP Tour’s elite at the Rogers Cup, which runs July 26-31. In addition to Raonic and the 19-year-old Zverev, the youngest player to crack the top 30 since 2006, the Rogers Cup field boasts most of the Tours top players. The list includes top-ranked Novak Djokovic, Wimbledon champion Andy Murray, Spanish legend Rafael Nadal and Shapovalov’s idol, ageless Swiss star Roger Federer.

“I know it’s going to be different,” Shapovalov said. “It’s going to be tough, but I’m just going to focus on playing every point and fighting.”

Curtis Withers, The Canadian Press