Grange on Davis Cup: Pressure on Pospisil
Posted February 9, 2012 11:27 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
As far as Canadian tennis goes, he’s the other guy.
As far as Canadian Davis Cup hopes went in 2011, he was The Man.
If Canada is to pull an upset this weekend in Vancouver, Vasek Pospisil will have to emerge from Milos Raonic’s shadow again.
Raonic is understandably the headline act as the most anticipated Canadian Davis Cup tie in years – maybe ever – gets underway Friday in Vancouver.
Davis Cup on Sportsnet: All matches can be seen live on Sportsnet from Friday-Sunday with coverage beginning at 5 p.m. ET / 2 p.m. PT. Also, watch the Davis Cup Aftershow following every broadcast, available only on sportsnet.ca.
But when Canada needed an outsized effort to keep their Davis Cup hopes alive in September it was Pospisil who made it happen, sweeping all three of his matches against Israel, playing the hero role when Raonic was hampered by injury and ill.
He opened the contest with a five-set, five-hour marathon win in the Israeli heat, with a hostile crowd – taunts of “double, double” not being the norm at Wimbledon – turning the temperature up even higher. He won the deciding match in straight sets two days later. His doubles victory in-between gave him a clean sweep and pushed his Davis Cup record to 6-1 in three Canadian victories last year.
“It was incredible, Davis Cup is a very special competition; it’s something you always dream of – representing your country,” says the 21-year-old from Vernon, BC who was born in Vancouver. “So to go 6-1 and help Canada qualify for the world group is obviously really special.”
Now comes the hard part. Canada’s reward for advancing to the prestigious World Group is a match against powerhouse France. Pospisil’s is the opening match against France’s No. 1 player — the powerful Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who comes into the match ranked No. 6 in the world.
It’s first team to win three of the available five points. Even if Raonic sweeps his singles matches Pospisil will need to contribute a singles win or team with Davis Cup veteran Daniel Nestor to win the doubles.
In singles Pospisil can hardly be the favourite – even though he had a career year last season he’s still 115th in the world.
But while Raonic was rocketing up the ATP rankings and getting tipped by the likes of John McEnroe as being the game’s next big thing, his friend and rival from junior tennis – they met when they were 11 – was learning he can handle the heat of the moment.
“I knew I had a level where I could pull off upsets,” he said in a telephone interview from Vancouver. “But to win three physical, grueling matches back-to-back on three days, I did surprise myself a little bit. It was quite a physically, mentally draining weekend. I pretty much slept for a week after that. I was pushed to the limit.”
He could thrive at the edges of his mental and physical state because he’s proven to be the rare athlete who seeks to push the envelope of his ability nearly every day he trains.
It’s probably unfair to compare Raonic and Pospisil simply because they’re peers, but it’s inevitable.
Raonic has what Tennis Canada coach Fred Neimeyer – the former Canadian pro who coached Raonic and now coaches Pospisil – a rare weapon in the form of his 200-km/h serve.
“That’s something you don’t see every day, only a very few guys have it,” said Neimeyer.
It’s helped Raonic become a threat to anyone he plays and is the engine that has driven two tour wins in the past year.
Pospisil doesn’t have that one defining aspect of his game, though Neimeyer says his serve, forehand and athleticism are all good enough to make him a top-50 player – their ranking goal for Pospisil in 2012.
But he has two things going for him that might just result in Canada having two singles players in the top-30 in the not so distant future.
The first is the presence of Raonic himself. Pospisil says they’re more friends than rivals, having travelled the world together playing in the same otherwise lonely development tour events and spent who knows how many days practicing.
But every success Raonic has is only more proof for Pospisil that he has the ability to reach the same heights. It does push him.
“It kind of puts things in perspective,” said Pospisil, who qualified for his first Grand Slam at the US Open last year and advanced to the second round of the Rogers Cup. “You see these top players like Gods, but in the end they’re just players like us. Obviously they’re very good, but if you work hard, if you go on the right path, anything is achievable. It’s great to have someone like that up there.
His other advantage, says his coach, is a strong will – a strength of character that was on display in Israel last September and will be tested again in Vancouver this weekend.
He exercises it daily in training and it provides the resolve players need to survive the kind of five-hour gut checks that are the part of high-level tennis.
“This kid is something special to work with; I’m very happy to have an athlete like that,” says Neimeyer. “He gives 110 per cent and never complains. I can’t say much more about him.”
Should Pospisil manage another round of Davis Cup heroics it will speak volumes.
