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Mixed results early on for the Canadians Tuesday at the Olympics with Leylah Fernandez outclassed by some vintage Angelique Kerber court craft in a 6-4, 6-3 loss that ousts her in the third round.

Fernandez is still alive in doubles.

Meanwhile, Félix Auger-Aliassime experienced quite the opposite as his opponent, German lefty Maximilian Marterer, left his game in the locker room.

Auger-Aliassime gave up one game late in the second set, but otherwise dropped some bakery products and is into the third round. He’ll play Daniil Medvedev Wednesday – a bit step up in class.

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Doubles farewells on Lenglen?

Andy Murray never got to the start line in singles. A game but slow Rafael Nadal was outclassed by Novak Djokovic in the second round.

But the two still had life at the Olympics, as both are still alive in doubles.

Murray and partner Dan Evans saved five match points in their first round against Japan, coming back from a 4-9 deficit in the match tiebreak. They play the Belgian pair of Sander Gille and Joran Vlieven.

Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz – the “dream team” of this Olympics – play Dutchmen Tallon Griekspoor and Wesley Koolhof.

It says something that both these matches are scheduled on the second-biggest court, Suzanne-Lenglen, despite the numbers of singles matches on the schedule.

The suspense is – will this be a final goodbye? Murray has announced this will be the final event of his career.

Nadal’s future is less cut-and-dried, but his last match at these Olympics likely will be his farewell to a venue that has given him everything in his career.

Both lived to play another day.

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Montreal wild cards announced

In the meantime, the tournament finally announced its wild card choices in Montreal.

Certainly they might have held on, hoping Rafael Nadal might decide to play. But that was likely never a realistic option.

One had been announced earlier: Denis Shapovalov.

They have three left. You knew one would be going to Montrealer Gabriel Diallo, who won the Chicago Challenger last week. If it weren’t, it’s unlikely he’d be playing the Challenger in Lexington this week even though it’s on his (former) college home turf.

Milos Raonic requested one. – and got one. Former No. 25 and Davis Cup hero Vasek Pospisil also needed one; he is currently ranked No. 616. And he got one.

Pospisil played both the Winnipeg and Granby Challengers but lost in the first round in both; in Granby, fellow Canadian Justin Boulais – just out of college and ranked No. 643 – took him out in straight sets.

But, essentially, he was chosen over Alexis Galarneau, a popular Montreal francophone player (Pospisil, from B.C., does speak French well).

That would explain why he withdrew from the Lexington challenger this week – which was kind of the dead giveaway this was going to happen.

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FAA – Mr. Mixed? Not so much

It’s hard to know how well Auger-Aliassime and Gabriela Dabrowski even know each other, coming from different generations of Canadian tennis.

But they’re teaming up for mixed, after Auger-Aliassime and Milos Raonic dropped a close one in the first round of the men’s doubles to Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul.

Auger-Aliassime’s mixed career is … well, it’s pretty patchy.

He played it at the United Cup this year, in Australia in January. There, his partner was neophyte Stacey Fung. Canada had already been eliminated by Greece, so it wasn’t a live match. But it was the first time Auger-Aliassime had gotten onto the match court in 2024, after dealing with a knee issue in 2023 that severely hampered his performance.

Auger-Aliassime and Dabrowski will play Heather Watson and Joe Salisbury – who DO have plenty of experience together, later Tuesday.

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US Open USTA wild-card update

Learner Tien on the men’s side and Alycia Parks on the women’s side are in the lead in the race to the USTA’s US Open main draw singles wild card, with two weeks left.

Here are the standings.

Tien, who is still 18 and of junior age, might have tried to earn a main-draw wild card by winning the USTA’s 18-and-under nationals.

But he’s going the pro event way. And so far it’s working out well.

The lefty had a 28-match win streak stopped in the semifinals of the Chicago Challenger last week. It began two months ago, when he won three straight $15,000 ITFs in the San Diego area. Then he went to Michigan and won a Challenger there – with all five wins coming in three sets, four of them from a set down.

Then he returned to California and win another $15K Futures tournament.

I mean, they should give it to him on the successful grinding alone.

Tien has a wild card into this week’s Challenger in Lexington, Kentucky, and will play Japan’s Rio Nogushi, a 25-year-old ranked No. 334, in the first round.

As for the women’s side, Alycia Parks gave herself a nice little lead when she reversed a horrifying losing streak in 2024 with a victory at a WTA 125 in Warsaw, Poland. She had to win a match in qualifying, as well. Luckily for her, in terms of the race, the event was played on hard courts, and therefore was eligible. She rolled the dice there on the bigger event, and it paid off.

But having bypassed the American ITFs over these last few weeks, Parks will need to play something else. She isn’t in this week’s $60K in Lexington, and she’s nowhere close to getting to the qualifying at the Canadian event in Toronto, which is a WTA 1000. So she would have to play the $100,000 ITF in Landisville, PA to try to seal the deal. That’s the final week of the race.

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Palermo toast, Transylvania back

The musical chairs at the 250 levels of the pros continues, with the announcement of the end of the clay-court event in Palermo.

The license for that event was sold to the indoor hard court event in Romania, the Transylvania Open for a reported €3 million.

Cluj-Napoca has been the site of a WTA tournament before – it was voted “WTA 250 tournament of the year” in both 2023 and 2023 despite not having any long-term security in terms of its future. But the WTA confirmed that it will now have a long-term sanction, and be held the week of Feb. 3, 2025, right after the Australian Open.

The Palermo tournament’s finale had top players Zheng Qinwen and Karolina Muchova battling it out.

Both were wild cards, though; the week after Wimbledon is a tough row to hoe to get players for a 250 – even if it should have been easier with the Olympics being on clay.

They’ve been holding the tournament for 35 years at various times of the year, but the future for 250 tournaments – on both the men’s and women’s side, is pretty grim. The tournament director evoked the WTA’s restrictions (this site doesn’t source or link to where it got that information, so take it for what it’s worth), and said that without the late wild cards it would have been no more than a WTA 125-level event. That was reflected in the attendance, which led the tournament site, the Country Time Club, to decide to sell the sanction and reinvest it in the club.

Zheng defended her title. And it was in Palermo in 2021 where she made her first WTA Tour main draw.

This came a day after the longstanding ATP 250 tournament in Atlanta held its finale – the victim of the realignment of the Masters 1000s and the expansion of the Canadian and Cincinnati events to 12 days, with expanded draws.

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Quality qualifying in Montreal

It’s too soon to know how many of the very top players will choose to make the quick turnaround from the red clay of Paris to the steamy hard courts of Montreal for next week’s Omnium Banque Nationale.

But regardless, the field is extremely deep.

Just look at the players who won’t even make it into the qualifying, and are awaiting withdrawals to try to squeeze in.

Entertaining veteran Fabio Fognini, freshly-crowned Atlanta champion Yoshihito Nishioka, Thanasi Kokkinakis, solid American Mackenzie McDonald, big-hitting south African Lloyd Harris, and former top-20 players Aslan Karatsev, Borna Coric and Cristian Garin. Rising young Czech Jakub Mensik squeaked in Tuesday, when Dusan Lajovic withdrew.

The wild cards into the qualifying are: Alexis Galarneau, Liam Draxl, Taha Baadi and Nicolas Arseneault.

Draxl, notably, IS playing the Lexington Challenger this week. But if he makes a deep run, the Sunday start for the qualies in Montreal might help.

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US Open qualifying lists out

The USTA has announced the lists for the qualifying at the US Open, which takes place the week of Aug. 19, before the main event.

Click here for the men’s list.

Click here for the women’s list.

There are seven women inside the top 104 at the top of the list, reflecting Monday’s rankings. The seventh is Alycia Parks who may well earn the USTA’s wild card.

Topping it is Petra Martic, ranked No. 90. The original singles entry list, with an earlier deadline, has Martic’s ranking at No. 99. Which still wasn’t good enough to get her in as the last direct entry was Sara Errani at No. 96.

Notably: Naomi Osaka, who was at No. 102 at the original deadline, doesn’t figure on the qualifying list. Not that it’s any surprise that the former champion will get a singles wild card.

The last player straight is in Louisa Chirico, ranked No. 219.

Canadians Rebecca Marino, Marina Stakusic and 2019 US Open champion Bianca Andreescu are on the qualifying list. You would expect Andreescu also to get a wild card. But the USTA also has to take care of its own, so it’ll be interesting. They’ll also surely be under pressure to give one to Caroline Wozniacki.

On the men’s side, seven men also in the top 104 sit atop the qualifying list.

On that list are Stan Wawrinka, Milos Raonic (at No. 177) and Diego Schwartzman (No. 211).

A few players squeezed in on their protected rankings: Nicolas Kicker (No. 217), Pablo Cuevas (No. 218) and Filip Krajinovic (No. 219).

We thought Cuevas had retired – his last match was exactly a year ago in Umag, and he doesn’t have a ranking. But perhaps he’s pulling a Dudi Sela and stretching out that protected ranking to earn another nice little payday.

He did that in Australia in January, losing 6-0, 6-1 to Giulio Zeppieri in the first round of qualifying but earning $31,250 AUD.

Gabriel Diallo is on the list for Canada, with Alexis Galarneau currently 14 out of making the cut.

Former champion Dominic Thiem, who is retiring this fall, is currently at No. 145 but absent from the qualifying list.

For previous editions of the Daily Drill, click here.

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