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Shapovalov’s coach Fuorivia, adds: “There’s also the hunger factor - for the pros every round means points, means dollars, means their next meal. In tennis, you only really make money inside the top 100 so those guys you’re playing, they’re battling, they want to make it to the next round. They’re going to do whatever it takes to win and stay in the match.
“The junior mentality is sometimes for people to go away faster. But in the pros, a win means a hotel room for the night, or another flight. Some of these guys are like ‘I don’t want to lose to a young kid’. These guys are fighting and grinding more and are solid more consistently. They are not going to give you as many free points as in the juniors.”
There’s also the fact that the ever-increasing depth of men’s tennis is making it harder and harder for youngsters to break through, not to mention that for a decade grand slam titles were almost exclusively hoovered up by a closed club of four.
“The biggest change in sport is athletes are doing more for a longer period of time due to training, due to diet, due to mentally being tougher,” Gilbert says.
“It’s harder to break in, it takes longer. When I turned pro [1982] it took you a couple of cups of coffee and boom you were in the top 100. You had to post a couple of wins and you were there.
Shapovalov idolised Roger Federer growing up CREDIT: TENNIS CANADA
“Now these kids have to play Futures for a year, then the Challengers. There are 800 or 900 guys playing the tour full time so it does take longer.”
Shapovalov agrees: “It’s incredibly difficult. Everything is so much more stacked than it was even five or 10 years ago. There are so many more good players, so many solid players. The level doesn’t really drop from around 100-500, it’s really tough to make it, but I just have to work as hard as possible.”
Thankfully Shapovalov has embraced the grind of the tennis world, and though he is aware of the challenges ahead, he is confident he can overcome them.
Earlier this year the 17-year-old took the surprise step of skipping the Australian Open junior competition to play in a series of hugely unglamorous Futures events (the lowest rung of the professional ladder, two tiers below the ATP Tour) in North America.
It’s a brutal, gritty landscape with sparse attendances and challenging conditionsagainst opponents fighting for their livelihoods, but it may prove to be the making of Shapovalov.
He says: “At the start of the year we wanted to play a lot of matches, so instead of paying so much money to get to Australia and not know how many matches I would get, we decided to go to Florida, which is nearby, and hopefully get a lot of matches under my belt. It was tough, but it set the tone for the rest of my season and gave me a lot of confidence and match experience, and that raised my level.”
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“I used to have a lot of tantrums on the court and wasn’t that good mentally a couple of years back. But I’ve worked really hard on that, and those Futures in Florida really toughened me up. I had to play nine matches to win a tournament within four or five days, so it’s a lot of different experiences and that has given me a real mental edge.”
In total, the Canadian won three Futures events between January and April, as well as enjoying a highly impressive run to the semi-finals of the Drummondville Challenger event, before reaching the French Open boys’ semi-final in June, winning the Wimbledon boys’ title in July, and securing that superb win over Kyrgios a few weeks later. Perhaps as impressive as his win over Kyrgios though was that Shapovalov returned to the reality of the Challenger circuit straight away and reached the quarters and then the semis at Granby and Gatineau respectively.
Shapovalov is joined on the tour by a growing group of young Canadians starting to make waves in the sport. Milos Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard have already reached major finals, and Shapovalov’s doubles partner is Félix Auger-Aliassime, 17, with whom he won the US Open boys' doubles title last year and who last week won the US Open boys' singles competition. There’s also Benjamin Sigouin, 17, who is ranked in the junior top 10 and reached the final of the US Open boys' doubles with Auger-Aliassime last week.
Shapovalov enjoys having so many fellow Canadians around but his single-minded focus is on emulating the likes of Roger Federer, Murray and Stan Wawrinka and going from junior grand slam winner to main tour star.
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He certainly believes he has what it takes to make the transition. “It’s about not caring about who the opponent is, treating every match the same. I’ve been doing a good job there,” he says.
“When I played Nick Kyrgios I just treated it as any other match - I didn’t think ‘oh my gosh it’s Nick Kyrgios’ - I just thought ‘I’m going to go and play my game, and see how far that takes me’."
Kyrgios for his part was very impressed by what he saw in Shapavolov and after being defeated by the young Canadian said: "He has a great future. I'm really looking forward to seeing how he's going to progress... He's a top player.”
When asked to describe his strengths and weaknesses, Shapavolov responds: “I have a pretty good serve, placing it well, and that really helps to set up the second shot - usually my forehand.
“As for weaknesses, I don’t have any part of my game that’s too weak. I’m fixing up my backhand, working on my returns and volleys. Nothing’s perfect but I don’t think there’s any major weakness in my game.
“Wimbledon is the slam I’m most suited to, I love playing on grass. I was 12 and 0 this season [Shapovalov won the junior Roehampton tournament as well as Wimbledon].”
Tennis analyst Craig O’Shannessy likes what he sees in Shapovalov and says: "I think of him as a lefty handed version of Federer, with that one-handed backhand.
"There is no ceiling for him. A lot of things need to go right to make the elite level, but his junior coaches have done a great job cementing technique fundamentals that he can continue to build on. He also has great energy and rapport with the crowd. That goes a long way."
Is he a future grand slam winner? "Much more yes than no. You can see all the pieces of the jigsaw sitting on the table already. Now he has a few years to make them all fit together on the big stage.
"He serves well, and controls the baseline with his forehand, which is key. His lefty play already makes opponents uncomfortable, but a lefty with an impressive forehand becomes a nightmare to play. He needs to copy [Rafael] Nadal's lefty patterns - with naturally less spin, and standing closer to the baseline.
"His run-around forehand from the deuce court is very good, and opens up nasty angles of the court. Opponents are going to go after his one-handed backhand first, so this will take some heat off it."
O'Shannessy is also not convinced that it's harder to make the leap from the juniors than it was before. "The step up is always a tough one, and the quality of play keeps rising, so yes it's harder in that instance," he says. "But juniors these days are already training so much and doing a pro schedule that they are more prepared than ever before."
Shapovalov’s coach Fuorivia, who has known him since he was six years old, says: ”Denis is definitely a go for it guy. Anything he thinks he can go for, he goes for it. That’s what’s helped him go from juniors to pros, and why so far it hasn’t been as tough a transition as some juniors have.
“From when Denis was 10 years old he always went for his shots and he still does. He has a big serve and right from that ball, he tries to dictate the point, and we’ve tried to continue that at all the levels we’ve played.
“He tells me he wants to be No 1 in the world, and if he can keep himself grounded and do the everyday things, he can get there.”
After the weekend's Davis Cup tie Shapovalov will return to the Challenger circuit, with a view to playing main tour grand slams next year. He, and all of Canada, is hoping it could be just the beginning for this exceptionally talented teenager.
Hopefully he can have a good run at the autumn US challengers.
