Canada’s struggling tennis stars look to tame clay surface at French Open

Victoria Mboko is the only Canadian player coming into the French Open with any kind of momentum.

And even then, the 19-year-old only rounded into form this week at a tuneup tournament in Strasbourg, where she plays the final on Saturday.

For the rest — three in the men’s singles along with Leylah Fernandez on the women’s side — it’s a mixed bag of injuries, bad luck and the natural ebbs and flows of a long, gruelling season.

And the surface: the red clay has been both kind and cruel to the Canadians in the past.

Mostly cruel.

But it’s a marathon, not a sprint. And all are looking at the positives heading into the tournament, which begins on Sunday.

For Mboko, the spring clay-court season began late because she had her wisdom teeth extracted. She then had to withdraw from Rome because of illness.

For Gabriel Diallo, it’s been his back.

“The entire clay-court season I’ve had back problems that I tried to play through with medication,” Diallo said. “But in Munich it was starting to get serious, and I had an injection. In Madrid I tried to push but it wasn’t ready, and so I skipped Rome.”

Diallo had planned to play a tournament in Geneva this week. But as he attempted to close a glass jar, it shattered; he ended up with shards in his left arm, requiring surgery. That cost him two weeks; he still had four stitches on a finger that were due to come out on Friday.

Felix Auger-Aliassime, who will be the No. 4 seed in the tournament, first meets Daniel Altmaier, a hard-hitting German who beat him on clay last year in Monte Carlo.

Auger-Aliassime hasn’t won back-to-back completed matches since Indian Wells in early March.

Shapovalov nursing sore wrist

“I obviously have to continue to ask questions to figure how I can avoid these early exits in tournaments. But clay remains a challenge for me; it just doesn’t suit my game style,” he said. “I’m going to try to see how I can be more consistent, how I can avoid these lulls. But I don’t have all those answers today.”

For Denis Shapovalov, a wrist issue has caused concern, although he said he and his team are managing it.

“It’s been a struggle. The balls are tough on the wrist — you see that Carlos [Alcaraz] is struggling with it. It’s pretty brutal, to be honest. But we have to accept it,” Shapovalov said. “I didn’t play well in Madrid. In Rome the conditions were not great for me, but [Mario] Navone [who went on to upset  Auger-Aliassime in the second round] is playing great tennis. I actually thought I played pretty well; I just couldn’t close points out. And here we are.

“I feel comfortable on the surface more than previous years. But this is always a tricky period for us, you know? We didn’t grow up on the clay,” he added.

Shapovalov’s first-round opponent will be qualifier Jaime Faria of Portugal. Diallo will meet Aussie veteran James Duckworth.

For Fernandez, once a quarterfinalist in Paris, a solid start to the clay-court swing in Stuttgart and Madrid last month has petered out, just when she needed to be on a roll.

She lost her opening matches both in Rome and at a lower-level event in Paris last week.

This week in Strasbourg, she made the quarterfinals but was rather emphatically dismissed by Mboko.

Mboko seeded 9th

The No. 24 seed faces the hard-hitting but inconsistent American Alycia Parks in the first round.

A year after she ran through the qualifying and to the third round of the main draw, Mboko returns as the No. 9 seed.

Last year, she came almost out of nowhere. She will surprise no one this year as she tries to back up that result.

Her first opponent will be a young Czech player, Nikola Bartunkova, who has an aggressive, unusual net-rushing game.

Diallo said the recent Canadian tennis swoon has to be put in perspective.

“Take Felix, for example. This time last year, I think if you told him that he’d come here and be the No. 4 seed, I think he’d have taken that with a big smile. But you can’t get too comfortable and deny reality. If players aren’t performing well, it’s because there are things to correct, things you have to improve,” he said.

“We’re all professional athletes; we’re all obsessed with wanting to win, to perform. So, we look in the mirror. And I’m convinced that we’ll finish the year well. Felix is No. 5 in the world; Vicky is top-10 in the world at 19. I think we’ll be fine.”

Shapovalov concurred.

“It’s a long season, you know. I think the most important thing is not to dwell on a few weeks of [poor] results, especially during this period. Because we have grass coming up. We have hard courts coming up. And, you know, there are many more weeks to do well.”