Shapovalov to carry the load for Canada

NEW YORK – The Canadian Davis Cup team nominations for next week’s World Group playoff tie against India will be announced shortly.

And the pressure of keeping the nation in the World Group for 2018 will fall squarely upon the shoulders of 18-year-old Denis Shapovalov.

Milos Raonic is on the shelf after a procedure on his wrist. Vasek Pospisil is dealing with a disc problem in his back. So that may curtail his participation in the tie, or at least limit it.

Peter Polansky declined. The venerable Daniel Nestor, who turned 45 Monday, has struggled to win matches this summer. Not only that, he has lost four of his last five Davis Cup doubles rubbers, with various partners.

So, it will be up to the teenager who took the tennis world by storm over the last month. Shapovalov made the semifinals at the Rogers Cup in Montreal. And then he made a star-making run from the qualifying to the fourth round of the US Open over the last two weeks.

Nominations Tuesday

The team is expected to be Shapovalov, Pospisil, Nestor and … Brayden Schnur, who will be making his Davis Cup debut.

It’s a tough ask. On the plus side, the Indian squad is far from a top-10 nation.

Team India doesn’t have a single player ranked in the top 150 in singles. Ramanathan is the highest-ranked at No. 155. Bhambri is No. 158, and Myeni is at … No. 490.

Bopanna is the top-ranked Indian doubles player at No. 17. But if you thought maybe they would go hard to try to win the doubles rubber, they have left three top-100 doubles players off the four-man roster. Divij Sharan, Purav Raja and the legendary Leander Paes are left off the list.

The tie will be played on an indoor hard court in Edmonton, out in the western (and northern) part of the country. And most of the Canadian squad is expected to assemble there this weekend.

Pospisil’s back is back

Pospisil retired after one set of his first-round match at the US Open against Fernando Verdasco. And he pulled out of the doubles as well.

He has been the player who often carried the squad when Milos Raonic was unavailable due to injury – which has been most of the last three years. But Pospisil has his own career to think about; the 27-year-old has been dealing with back issues on and off the last few years. And the last thing he needs is another extended period out of action.

If not Pospisil, who?

The powers-that-be have evidently decided that the other Canadian teenage phenom, Félix Auger-Aliassime, will continue to play a series of Challengers in Europe. It might be time to put in a call to Frank (The Tank) Dancevic, in that worst-case scenario.

No rest for weary Shapovalov

What Shapovalov probably needs, after the physically and mentally draining month he’s had, is a week on the beach somewhere. But he has to continue pushing on.

But not only will he be counted on to win both his singles matches – both best-of-five sets, as at the US Open – he will then head straight to Prague after an invitation by captain John McEnroe to represent “Team World” at the Laver Cup against the likes of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

It’s a lot to ask of himself, with so many opportunities still available this fall to improve his ranking even more – and perhaps even think about being seeded at the Australian Open next January.