GRANBY — One of the goals of the National Bank Challenger series is to provide young Canadian tennis players an opportunity to face international competition and earn points toward rankings on the ATP and WTA tours.
By that measure, the three-tournament series that wrapped up Sunday in Granby was an unqualified success.
The biggest beneficiary was Leylah Annie Fernandez, the 16-year-old from Laval. After winning the French Open girls’ singles title in June, Fernandez decided not to play the junior event at Wimbledon so she could concentrate on her professional career
It proved to be the right decision.
In between a loss in the first round at Saskatoon and a 6-1, 6-4 loss to Australian Lizette Cabrera in the final of the $80,000 ITF World Tour Granby Challenger on Sunday, Fernandez won nine consecutive matches. She won the Challenger event in Gatineau for her first professional tournament win and boosted her ranking from No. 372 to No. 257.
Two weeks of intensive tennis caught up to Fernandez Sunday. She needed nearly three hours to beat Montrealer Françoise Abanda in the semifinals Saturday and fell behind early in Sunday’s showdown. She lost her service in the second game of the match and played catch-up the rest of the afternoon.
Fernandez must now wait to see whether she gets a wild card into the main draw of the Rogers Cup women’s event, which gets underway next weekend in Toronto. At the very least, she will get a wild card into the qualifying event. But her play over the past two weeks should merit a spot in the main event.
If she’s healthy, Bianca Andreescu will get a direct entry in the main daw. There are four wild cards available and one will go to former top-10 player Eugenie Bouchard. Rebecca Marino, Katherine Sebov and Françoise Abanda are all ranked ahead of Fernandez, but the Laval teen played better than the other three over the past month.
Fernandez wasn’t the only Canadian woman to benefit from the Canadian Challengers. Sebov, who lost to Cabrera in the semifinals Saturday, reached the top 200 for the first rime.
And Abanda reached the semifinals at Gatineau and Granby, a strong showing after missing most of the past six months with a recurring shoulder injury.
On the men’s side, American Ernesto Escobedo defeated Japan’s Yasutaka Uchiyama 7-6 (5), 6-4 in the final of the $100,000 ATP Challenger. Uchiyama reached the final by defeating No. 2 seed and defending champion Peter Polansky of Thornhill, Ont., 7-6 (7), 6-4 in the semifinals Saturday.
Several Canadians attending U.S. colleges on tennis scholarships competed in the Challenger events and the most successful was 20-year-old Alexis Galarneau of Laval, who won two matches at both Gatineau and Granby. Galarneau has one more semester to complete at North Carolina State University, but he’ll delay his return to school until the spring. He’ll use the fall to lay the groundwork for what he hopes will be a professional career by playing in as many Challenger events as possible.
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