Against all odds, without being a priori one of the candidate teams to fight for the Salad Bowl, Canada will play today the final of this new Davis Cup organized by Gerard Piqué after defeating Russia at the decisive point of doubles (6-3, 3- 6 and 7-6). The pair formed by Denis Shapovalov and Vasek Pospisil, who have played both all matches of the Canadian team in the tournament, surpassed the Russian tandem composed of Andrey Rublev and Karen Khachanov .

Despite having four players, the American captain, the young Frank Dancevic (34 years) has not given a break to his two main tennis players, who only rested in the doubles match against the US on Tuesday, in that controversial decision of retire claiming physical problems when they were already classified. The two protagonists in the first final of the history of Davis Cup for Canada share something else: origins far from the country they represent.

Denis Shapovalov , the most recognizable, is one of those young people (born in 1999) called to end the dictatorship of Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic on the ATP circuit and was born in Israel. His Russian father and his Ukrainian mother moved to Canada when he had not yet turned one. There began the adventure with the racket of the young Denis. At the age of five, her mother, Tessa, pointed to the tennis club she had opened.

Current world number 15 and with an ATP title already in his backpack (Stockholm 2019), Shapovalov has accumulated a balance of three wins and a single defeat in this Davis Cup in individual matches. Yesterday, with his selection against the ropes after the fall of Pospisil in the first turn of the morning, he pulled courage to overcome the giant Karen Khashanov by two sets (6-4, 4-6 and 6-4).

Fervent follower of the Toronto Raptors , the tennis player is a regular spectator in the front rows of the Air Canada Center, home of the team that lifted the NBA champion ring last year. There, he usually trains the 20-year-old boy, chosen as the best young tennis player and tennis player with the greatest progression of the circuit in 2017.

Russia, Czechoslovakia and Togo

Meanwhile, his doubles partner throughout Davis, Vasek Pospisil, has become the big surprise of the Canadian team. Felix Auger-Aliassime's ankle injury opened the doors of the singles and his response has been brilliant. In the quarterfinals, against the Australian John Millman, theoretically superior, a victory was taken from his sleeve that was key to the subsequent classification of his team. His parents, Czechoslovakians, fled the country in 1989, on the occasion of the war in the country. Later they settled in Canada, where the tennis player was born.

But the two titular members of the Canadian team are not the only ones whose origins are far from the country of the maple leaf. Felix Auger-Aliassime, 21 in the ranking, who has not been able to jump to the track due to a left ankle injury suffered in the Vienna tournament, has a Togolese father , Sam, who emigrated when he was just a kid to Montreal, where he met to his wife, Marie, and where he had his first child.

The first two, Shapovalov and Pospisil, have led Canada to the first Davis Cup final in its history. So far, his best results were the two semifinals, reached in 1913 and 2013. The North American team has an opportunity that nobody predicted before the start of the tournament: to raise the salad bowl. A milestone that would be celebrated in Canada, of course, but also in Russia, the former Czechoslovakia and Togo, where many of the relatives of the Canadian team reside.

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