Canadian Tennis Superstars of 2014
Overview
In a country that reveres its team sports, and especially hockey, Canadian tennis was definitely in the spotlight. Canadians, for the first time in history, made the men's singles, women's singles and men's doubles top 10 rankings. Daniel Nestor continued to be a top 5 doubles player at the young age of 42. Eugenie Bouchard reached a ranking of #5 earlier this year after having made 3 grand slam semi-finals and 1 grand slam final (Wimbledon of all places). She ended up the year at a very impressive #7 and participated in the year-end WTA Finals in Singapore where the top 8 women play a round robin year-end tournament to determine who is the best women's player 2014.
Milos Raonic also qualified for the year-end Masters Tournament involving the top 8 men players but unfortunately was injured partway through the tournament and ending the year ranking #6 in the world. That all three Canadians made it to the year-end tournaments is simply amazing.
One has to only look back to the semi-final 2014 Wimbledon Tournament when we had a Canadian in the men's singles semifinals, a Canadian in the women's single finals and a Canadian in the men's doubles semifinals. An amazing feat for a sport that 10 years ago was not even on the radar screen here in Canada.
To cap an amazing tennis year for Canada, both Raonic and Bouchard won the equivalent top Canadian Athlete Awards of 2014 for the second year in a row http://tinyurl.com/ot57b6k, Raonic winning the Lionel Conacher Award and Bouchard winning the Bobby Rosenfeld Award. http://tinyurl.com/os8rdu4
Bouchard won her award in a landslide, earning 74 out of 76 votes. Raonic's victory was more hard fought, winning 29 out of 82 votes with Drew Doughty winning 19 votes who led the Men's Canadian Olympic Team to gold at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the LA Kings to a Stanley Cup.
This has been a proud year for all Canadians, tennis fans or otherwise. It has seen 2 of our youngest and most promising athletes get placed firmly on the world tennis map. We all look forward to an exciting 2015 and hopefully, even better results from our 3 Canadian tennis superstars.
