'The last four or five years we felt like we had a real shot at winning and we got closer and closer and it was definitely a dream that was there'
TORONTO — Vasek Pospisil has the feelings one would expect about being a member of the team that won the Davis Cup, the first in Canada’s history. Joy, elation, pride.
And also a feeling that is a little more unexpected.
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“In some ways it feels like a huge, almost, relief, to be honest,” Pospisil says.
Relief, you say? This might seem odd, given that the Davis Cup, which pits national teams of the best men’s tennis players in the world against each other, has been around for 122 years and for almost all of those years the notion of Canada winning it was a ridiculous one. It’s tennis weather in much of the country for only a few months a year. Let’s not get crazy.
But Pospisil was on the Canadian team that made a shocking Davis Cup run in 2019, defeating tennis powers Australia and Russia on the way to loss in the finals to Rafael Nadal and Spain. Two years of pandemic disruption followed, but this year the stars aligned, quite literally: Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime both committed to the team for the knockout stages, which took place late last month in Spain. That gave Canada a top-20 ATP player in Shapovalov, and a top-10 player in Auger-Aliassime who happened to be playing the best tennis of his life, with three tournament wins in recent months. Among the eight nations to qualify for the knockouts, only the United States, winners of the competition 32 times, could boast a one-two punch, rankings-wise, to compare with Canada’s. Pospisil, at 32 years old, knew a chance like this might not come again.
“The last four or five years we felt like we had a real shot at winning and we got closer and closer and it was definitely a dream that was there,” says Pospisil, sitting across a coffee table recently in a downtown Toronto office building.
But it was also a tricky dream to realize. For Pospisil, he was going into the knockouts knowing he would likely only play in the anchor match. (In Davis Cup play, there are two singles matches followed by a doubles match if the first two are split.)
“In some ways, in Davis Cup format, all the pressure goes on that doubles match,” he says. “I felt like every match I was playing, the pressure was mounting more and more, every time.”
Shapovalov lost his opening match against Germany, but Auger-Aliassime won his to send the tie to doubles. Pospisil and Shapovalov dropped a set, but rallied to win the next two. Against Italy in the semi-finals, Shapovalov lost a tight three-setter, Auger-Aliassime won his match to keep Canada alive, and then Pospisil partnered with him to win doubles and go to the final.
It was, Pospisil says, intense.
“I feel like the team was counting on me, which is ironic because we have two young guys who are ranked among the top players in the world,” he says. “But in some ways I felt this responsibility to do my part, because I have experience, because I’ve been around, because I have a good Davis Cup track record as well, there’s an expectation there.”
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He says that responsibility, or at least the feeling of it, had its benefits.
“It made me play better,” he says. “There’s pressure, but because we really believed we could win this competition, it made you play better.”
In the end, his sharpened edge wasn’t required against Australia in the final. Shapovalov started things off with a win, and then Auger-Aliassime rolled over Alex de Minaur to clinch the title before doubles was necessary.
“I was ready to play, I was excited to, but obviously it’s better that it just ends 2-0,” Pospisil says. “That was awesome.”
Now, after a victory that he ranks right up there with a doubles title he won at Wimbledon in 2014, Pospisil has a couple of weeks off — professional tennis is a grind — before getting ready for the hardcourt season on the other side of the world. Having been ranked as high as 25th in 2014, and again inside the top-30 after making it to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon the following season, he believes he still has a singles career in front of him.
“That’s why I’m still playing. I haven’t had a healthy full year since 2017. I do feel like my level is higher than where my ranking has been,” he says. (He’s currently an even 100 in the ATP ranking.)
“My goal the next three years will be to get back in the top 50, and who knows, maybe higher, but that’s where my focus will be.”
There are a few days yet, though, to bask a little in the Davis Cup victory, to relish having done something that no other Canadian athletes have accomplished.
Pospisil grins a bit when talking about it, and says the whole thing remains a little surreal.
“It was just something I wanted to win so badly, for the team, for Canada,” he says, smiling again. “And the fact that we were able to do it is just amazing.”
“And, yeah, a big relief, too.”
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