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The Canadians will be going full out to try to win the Davis Cup again.

Tennis Canada announced on Monday the squad that will hit Manchester for the round-robin portion of the finals from Sept. 10-15 is loaded.

Félix Auger-Aliassime
Denis Shapovalov
Gabriel Diallo
Milos Raonic
Vasek Pospisil

It’s like two generations of Canadian tennis merging. And, you’d have to think, Milos Raonic’s last opportunity to hoist the Davis Cup.

He wasn’t on the team when they won it in in 2022, with Auger-Aliassime going 5-1 on the week after skipping the qualifying round earlier in the season.

Canada is in a pool with Great Britain (the “home” squad, with Cameron Norrie and Jack Draper), Finland and Argentina. It could be a lot worse.

A lot of American no-shows

On the other side of the 45th parallel, the Americans have somewhat less than perfect attendance for their own quest for the Cup.

Despite having a really deep pool of players these days, the U.S. hasn’t won the Davis Cup since 2007. That squad was Andy Roddick, James Blake, Mike Bryan and Bob Bryan.

For this year’s finals, group stages, the USTA nominated: Sebastian Korda, Marcos Giron, Brandon Nakashima, Austin Krajicek and Rajeev Ram.

They are in a pool with Germany, Slovakia and Chile.

To be fair, they would have to travel all the way to Zhuhai, China right after the US Open, which is a particularly draining fortnight for them as it’s their Home Grand Slam.

As well, several of the top-ranked Americans will be playing the Laver Cup in Berlin immediately afterwards.

Then, the Tour does pivot to Asia after the US Open. But the 500 and 1000 tournaments aren’t until the week of the 26th.

So playing Davis Cup would involve going from the U.S., all the way to China, then back to Europe (Berlin) and then all the way to China or Japan after that.

In an Olympic year, with an already packed schedule.

Germany’s Alexander Zverev also won’t be making the trip, although Chile will have their best: Cana-Chilean Alejandro Tabilo, Nicolas Jarry and Cristian Garin.

(It’s worth noting that there is a VERY NICE big of coin involved in playing this event these days).

But whatever the reasons were to host one of the pool groups in China, it didn’t seem to consider the players all that much. Especially as China isn’t even in it.