Rafael Nadal will look to win back-to-back Canadian ATP Masters 1000 titles this week in Montreal as the all-time Masters 1000 titles leader (34) headlines the field in Canada. Here are 10 things to watch in Montreal:

1. Sixth Of 2019: The Coupe Rogers in Montreal is the sixth ATP Masters 1000 tournament of the season, and for the first time since 2003 there have been five different Masters 1000 champions going into the Canadian Masters 1000 event.

2. Former Champions: Four-time champion Rafael Nadal (2005, 2008, 2013, 2018), Alexander Zverev (2017), and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (2014) are the former winners in the draw.

3. 40th Anniversary: This is the 40th edition of a professional tournament being held at the renovated former home of the Montreal Expos, Jarry Park Stadium. In 1980, Martina Navratilova defeated Greer Stevens in the final of the first Montreal tournament. This was a different event from the Canadian Open. There have been 13 different men’s winners in Montreal (since 1981) with Lendl leading the way with five titles, followed by Novak Djokovic (2), Andy Murray (2) and Nadal (2).

4. Reigning Champion: Nadal is the No. 1 seed for the third consecutive year and fifth time overall at the Coupe Rogers. He has a 34-8 overall record and his four titles are the most in an Masters 1000 hard-court tournament. As the top seed in the draw, Nadal has a 15-2 record (2005 – Won, 2010 – SF, 2017 – 3R, 2018 – Won).

5. Thiem Looks For First Win: No. 2 seed Dominic Thiem is looking for his first Coupe Rogers win (0-5). Thiem won his third ATP Tour title of the season and his first career on home soil on Saturday in Kitzbuhel.

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6. Felix Makes Home Debut: Canadian No. 2 Felix Auger-Aliassime is making his main draw debut in his hometown tournament. A year ago, the #NextGenATP star was ranked No. 133 when he won his main draw debut in Toronto. The youngest player in the Top 100 ATP Rankings turns 19 on Thursday.

7. Canadian Top 100 Milestone: This is the first time in tournament history four Canadians are in the Top 100 of the ATP Rankings, led by No. 19 Milos Raonic, who reached the final in 2013.

8. Masters 1000 Wins Leaderboard: Roger Federer has the most Masters 1000 wins (378) and Nadal is in second place with 377. Nadal has the most Masters 1000 titles (34), one better than Djokovic.

9. Monfils Eyes 100th Win: No. 16 seed Gael Monfils has a 99-76 career record in Masters 1000 tournaments. He is trying to become the 18th active player to win 100 Masters 1000 matches.

10. Strong Doubles Draw: Eight of the Top 10 teams in the ATP Doubles Team Rankings are in Montreal, led by the No. 1 duo of Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah of Colombia. Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan, the seventh seeds, are four-time champions.

Three-time singles winner Andy Murray is playing doubles at the Coupe Rogers for the first time since 2015. He is teaming with Feliciano Lopez for the second time (Queen’s Club champions). Murray was a doubles finalist in Montreal in 2013 (w/Colin Fleming).

It was October 2013 at an ATP Challenger Tour event in Geneva, Switzerland. World No. 114 Jan-Lennard Struff dismissed a 17-year-old Russian named Karen Khachanov in the quarter-finals 6-2, 6-4 in exactly one hour.

On paper, there was nothing special about the match, as the German eased past the then-World No. 511 by breaking serve four times. But Struff could sense then that the Russian was on his way to doing great things in the sport.

“I had a feeling [in 2013] he was already a pretty decent player,” Struff told ATPTour.com. “He was striking the ball very hard and going for his shots. He beat a lot of good guys.”

Nearly six years later, on 10 June, 23-year-old Khachanov cracked the Top 10 of the ATP Rankings for the first time. 

As recently as 12 months ago, the Russian was still World No. 38. But for the past two months he has been among the elite of the elite on the ATP Tour. Khachanov, who is the sixth seed at this week’s Coupe Rogers, says his rapid rise can be traced back to last year’s Canadian ATP Masters 1000 tournament held in Toronto, where he made his first semi-final at this level, beating two Top 15 players before losing to eventual champion Rafael Nadal in two tight sets.

“I would say that was the first step to show myself that I am capable of playing in the further stages of the bigger events,” Khachanov told ATPTour.com. “I lost to Rafa here, [but] I also had chances. It was a good match.”

Khachanov, who qualified for the inaugural Next Gen ATP Finals in 2017, has long been lauded as one of the biggest ball-strikers on the ATP Tour since he broke onto the scene.

But it took a series of losses to send him to the next level. Following his Toronto loss against Nadal, Khachanov played the legendary lefty about a month later in the third round of the US Open, where the Spaniard needed four hours and 23 minutes to outlast the Russian in a bruising four-set battle.

“The physical [game] is important of course, but I think physically I’m quite good and ready to play against him. We played four sets in four and a half hours, so if we went to a decider it would’ve been more than five hours and I was okay. I was not super fresh, but still,” Khachanov said. “I was managing to control this intensity with him. When you play against Rafa, the intensity is always 150 per cent. So it was more mental of course to really believe that you can beat one of the top guys.

“Coming into the US Open, I was feeling much more confident and there the match had everything. I had chances [there] as well. I think after that I was on one side really disappointed, but from the other side, I really had decided I could play at that level more consistently and that’s what happened, especially at the end of the year.”

Just more than a month later, Khachanov captured his third ATP Tour trophy in Moscow, setting the stage for his biggest breakthrough yet at the Rolex Paris Masters, the final Masters 1000 tournament of the season. Then-World No. 18 Khachanov beat four Top 10 opponents in a row to earn his first triumph at that level, stunning red-hot Novak Djokovic in a straight-sets final to become the lowest-ranked player to claim a Masters trophy since No. 26 Ivan Ljubicic in Indian Wells in 2010.

Khachanov did not start 2019 the way he finished 2018, though, failing to reach a quarter-final until the BNP Paribas Open in March. That’s why the year-end No. 11 needed until June to make his breakthrough into the Top 10.

“The beginning of the year was not as great as I was expecting… but still, it’s a new milestone that I achieved,” Khachanov said. “I just want to get better and maybe have more consistent results this year and to try to aim for higher goals. But [I’m taking it] one step at a time, and first you need to try to be more competitive in more matches and then hopefully my ‘A’ game will work better.”

Khachanov admits he’s in search for one thing in particular: consistency. The Russian advanced to his first Grand Slam quarter-final at Roland Garros, but he is trying to learn how to win when he doesn’t bring his best tennis to the court.

“When you don’t feel perfectly, when you don’t feel as good maybe as you wish and something is not working, you still try to win those kinds of matches. That’s what I think our trio [of the Big Three] is doing all the time,” Khachanov said. “From outside you don’t see it, maybe you think they’re still playing great, but… they are still not happy with their game.

“But they are winning.”

Even if Khachanov hasn’t found another Paris-like result yet this season, he has impressed his peers nonetheless. His countryman Evgeny Donskoy has won both of their FedEx ATP Head2Head meetings in three sets, but the veteran is not surprised by Khachanov’s ascent.

“He’s grown so much, I think. The [ATP] Rankings speak for themselves. He’s grown in his level of performance and grown in his head with mental strength,” Donskoy told ATPTour.com. “Even when he wasn’t in the Top 100, everybody was saying [he could make it], and I was also. If somebody would have told me that this guy will be in the Top 10, I would say, ‘Why not’?”

Donskoy and Struff had those thoughts then, and now Khachanov is turning the entire ATP Tour, and its fans, into believers of his game. Slowly but surely, he’s working to make the Khachanov who triumphed indoors in Paris appear weekly. And for the rest of the players, that’s a scary thought.

“His groundstrokes are so fast and he’s going for his shots,” Struff said. “He’s a good player. A very, very good player.”

Nick Kyrgios was 19 ½ hours away from one of the biggest moments of his career, playing in the Citi Open final in Washington, D.C.

But after his semi-final win on Saturday night, Kyrgios realised he had a slight problem. He had only one racquet.

The Aussie arrived in the U.S. weeks ago with five. But he donated one to an Atlanta charity, broke two during on-court tirades in Washington and the other racquet wasn’t fit for match use.

Some players walk on court with a dozen racquets before any match, let alone a final. But Kyrgios had only one.

Earlier, he had asked his dad to send five more from Canberra, Australia. But, on Saturday night, the handful of sticks were stuck in customs at FedEx’s Washington Dulles International Airport distribution centre and scheduled for a Monday delivery, too late for Kyrgios to use them for the 5 p.m. Sunday final. The centre was closed on Sunday.

At 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Kyrgios’ team texted Tournament Manager Mark Ein, explaining the situation and asking for help. Is there anything you can do?

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Ein, a longtime entrepreneur and investor in D.C., knew just who to contact. FedEx has been a longtime supporter of the ATP 500 event, and for years, Ein has been friends with Gina Adams, FedEx’s Senior Vice President of Government Affairs. He called Adams to see what she could do.

But she didn’t answer. Ein texted, nothing. He e-mailed. Still no response.

Kyrgios and his team went to bed the night before the final thinking there was a chance he would have to take the court with only one racquet.

Of course, you don’t play with two or five racquets. Having only one for the final, in theory, wouldn’t be a problem, so long as everything went perfectly: Kyrgios behaved himself, no strings popped and he didn’t have a freak slip on the court or a funny landing that caused the racquet to break.

“Obviously playing a final you want to go out there with more than one,” Kyrgios told ATPTour.com.

But by 6:30 a.m. Sunday, they had reason for hope. Adams, who had been traveling and was in Copenhagen, got back to Ein.

“We’re on it,” she said. She asked him for updates to track the FedEx delivery.

Two hours later, by 8:30 a.m., the racquets were released from the centre and sent to the tournament site. By 9:30 a.m., they had arrived at the Rock Creek Park Tennis Centre, and the racquets had been strung and were ready for Kyrgios to use for his second ATP 500 final of the season by 10:30 a.m., six and a half hours to spare.

“I was so happy we could get that done for Nick, and I think they were really appreciative of it,” Ein told ATPTour.com. “It’s our philosophy to do whatever it takes to help the players perform at their best, really whatever it takes.”

Ultimately, Kyrgios didn’t need a bundle of racquets to beat World No. 10 Daniil Medvedev and win his second ATP 500 title of the season and the sixth ATP Tour title of his career. But when Kyrgios takes the court, it’s always best to be prepared.

“[Ein] was able to pull some strings for me, and that was massive honestly for FedEx to make an exception and get me some racquets for the final, which was awesome. I’m super thankful to Mark and to FedEx,” Kyrgios said. “Everything happens for a reason. I got the racquets and got the W.”

There are few tennis fans without a strong opinion on Nick Kyrgios, tennis’ No. 1 showman and temperamental genius. Here are a few reasons why…

This week alone during his title run at the Citi Open, Kyrgios electrified crowds. He fist-bumped courtside fans and three times asked front-row patrons where to serve on match point. He hand-delivered shoes mid-match to his semi-final opponent Stefanos Tsitsipas, served underarm and threw in a ‘drop shot’ serve. He also served at more than 140mph and, of course, entertained with the obligatory tweeners, drop shots and scorching forehands. Before matches he played ping pong with kids in the players’ lounge.

“Are you not entertained,” he asked the crowd during his first-round win over Thai-Son Kwiatkowski.

But he also threw a drink bottle into the side of the umpire’s chair, scolded members of his players’ box, seemed to lose interest during the second set against Tsitsipas, tossed his racquet as frequently as a chef tosses a salad and sprinkled F-bombs into his on-court commentary as liberally as a fan throws salt on french fries.

Speaking to ATP Tour.com early in the week – before witnessing any of that – Kyrgios’ friend and two-time Wimbledon champion Andy Murray was asked to opine about the Australian’s place in the game.

“When he’s mentally engaged in the matches he’s brilliant for tennis because he has an exciting game, a big personality and he’s different,” Murray said. “People enjoy watching that. I enjoy watching that. His match with Rafa at Wimbledon was one of the best matches of the tournament. That’s really good for tennis.

“As someone who knows him well, I like him. I just want to see him do that all of the time. I don’t like it when he doesn’t try as hard as… I have behaved badly myself, so it would be hypocritical of me to say that I am an angel.”

Before Sunday’s final at the Citi Open – in which Kyrgios defeated Russian Daniil Medvedev 7-6(6), 7-6(4) – he was left with just one match racquet after a miscalculation. He started the week with just three match racquets after giving one to charity in Atlanta, and he smashed two in D.C. (His father FedExed him another five from Canberra, with the racquets arriving on site at 10 a.m. on Sunday after some help from tournament owner Mark Ein to have them extricated from Dulles airport.)

“Everyone matures at different ages,” Murray said. “Some people are ready when they are 18, 19 to deal with what comes with being a top athlete and some people aren’t ready and it takes them a bit of time. I’m hoping that with time Nick will learn and be better for it.

“When he’s engaged in tennis and wants to play he’s brilliant for the game. And when he isn’t giving his best effort and misbehaving, that’s not what people want to see. He needs to find that balance.”

Kyrgios has now won six ATP titles, including three at the 500 level (also Tokyo 2016, Acapulco 2019).

He now heads to Montreal for the Coupe Rogers, where he faces a tough opener against Brit Kyle Edmund in the first round. If he wins, he’ll face a re-match with Medvedev.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 9.20 pm EDT Sunday after the Kyrgios camp clarified that Nick began his US tour with four match racquets in Atlanta but arrived in Washington with three match racquets and one other racquet that differed from his match racquets.

Aussie Nick Kyrgios experienced a gamut of emotions on Sunday during the Citi Open final: Discomfort from his back, glee from his tweeners and joy from another flawless week at an ATP 500 event.

The 24-year-old beat World No. 10 Daniil Medvedev 7-6(6), 7-6(4) for his second ATP 500 title of the season in Washington, D.C. Kyrgios won the Abierto Mexicano Telcel presentado por HSBC in Acapulco in March (d. Zverev) and has now won six ATP Tour titles, including three at the ATP 500 level (Tokyo 2016).

“This has honestly been one of my favourite weeks of my life. I’ve made massive strides,” Kyrgios said. “I started becoming friends with the smoothie guy, he knew what smoothie I wanted. I was playing ping pong with some kids before I’m playing. You guys were amazing. It was honestly a week to remember.”

“I’ve had people behind me, backing me, and they never lost faith in me even when I lost faith in myself. This week means a lot. It’s great to get the win, but I’ve proved to myself and the people backing me that I can still produce at the highest level.”

The Aussie mixed up baseline rallies well against Medvedev, slicing and bringing the 6’6” Russian to net with drop shots. But Kyrgios’ serve was the story as he never faced a break point and hit 18 aces, including two to close out the final. Kyrgios finished with 110 aces through six matches.

He improved to 5-1 against Top 10 players in 2019, a winning percentage of 83, best on the ATP Tour this year. World No. 1 Novak Djokovic has won seven of his nine matches against Top 10 players this season (7/9, 78%).

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Kyrgios, No. 52, will receive 500 ATP Rankings points and is projected to return to the Top 30 on Monday when the new standings are released. He also will receive $365,390 in prize money.

“We all know how well Nick can play when he wants to. This week he wanted to play, and he was tough,” Medvedev said.

The Russian lost only one service point before the first-set tie-break and had the set on his racquet at 5/4. But Kyrgios stole the tie-break, saving a set point at 5/6 and gaining his third mini-break to take the opener.

After the first set, the Aussie took a medical time-out, which seemed to solve the back spasms that had him stretching on court during changeovers. But he still couldn’t break through on Medvedev’s serve. The Russian won 80 per cent of his service points for the match (55/69). He will receive 300 ATP Rankings points and $183,780 in prize money.

In the tie-break, Kyrgios was again the steadier of the two, jumping ahead by a mini-break at 5/3 when Medvedev lifted a forehand long, and the Aussie continued his match-point Washington tradition. For the third match in a row, before serving on match point, he leaned over the court side wall and asked a fan for advice on where he should hit his serve. Kyrgios then delivered another ace out wide in the Deuce Court.

Did You Know?
The Citi Open sold out seven of 11 sessions, including one of the qualifying rounds. This was the tournament’s first edition under the management of entrepreneur Mark Ein. “We shattered every attendance record ever for this event. We beat the all-time ticket revenue on Tuesday night,” Ein said.

It was four days of shock and awe.

Five years ago, at the 2014 Rogers Cup in Toronto, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga produced tennis that equaled or exceeded the best of his career. The Frenchman, then 29, claimed four Top 10 scalps over four consecutive days to win his second – and most recent – ATP Masters 1000 title.

One by one, World No. 1 Novak Djokovic, No. 9 Andy Murray, No. 8 Grigor Dimitrov and No. 3 Roger Federer fell victim to the rampaging Tsonga.

Although Tsonga returns to the ATP Masters 1000 tournament in Montreal next week rather than Toronto, memories of his dramatic run in Canada five years ago will surely give him extra confidence as he looks to continue his steady climb back up the ATP Rankings after his 2018 knee surgery.

“That was amazing for me,” Tsonga said of the title run. “All those guys have given me a hard time in my career. It was tough for me because I came along at the same time as them and they are among the best players in history. To be able to beat them in a row, at one tournament, was a good reward for me.”

Coming into the 2014 Rogers Cup, Tsonga was looking for his first title in almost 18 months (Marseille 2013). His big-tournament lead-in form had been solid – fourth-round defeats to Novak Djokovic at Roland Garros and Wimbledon – but hardly suggestive of what was to come. And it started with a bang against Djokovic, who had won their previous nine matches and 18 sets.

“The win over Djokovic was a little strange because I won 6-2, 6-2. It’s never been like that with him. The win over Andy was the most difficult for me. It was a big match with a lot of intensity that was tight in the third. I was very proud to win that because he’s such a fighter. With Roger I played the perfect final. It was amazing.”

TSONGA’S PATH TO THE 2014 ROGERS CUP TITLE

After beginning 2019 at No. 239 in the ATP Rankings, Tsonga had worked his way back inside the Top 70 coming into this week’s Citi Open in Washington, D.C, helped in large part by winning his 17^th title in Montpellier in February.

“That Tsonga's Four Days Of Shock & Awe In Canada was very emotional because it happened quickly. When I came back last September, I told myself I would give myself a lot of time to play good tennis. I was surprised how quickly it came.

“At this stage of my career the most difficult part of the comeback was to be motivated. Motivation is the main thing in tennis. You need to be 100 per cent to be at the top. When you make so many sacrifices and have had so many good results, and you know that it will take time and additional sacrifice to get back to the top, it can be difficult.

“But I was ready to make the sacrifice to get back on court and give my best.”

Heading into the Coupe Rogers, Tsonga in 2019 boasts an impressive 23-12 record, which includes a three-set win over World No. 8 Karen Khachanov in Washington.

“I’m feeling really good and just happy to be on court again playing good tennis. Hopefully that can continue through the season. I expect to reach my best level.”

DID YOU KNOW
When Tsonga won his first ATP Masters 1000 title in Paris in 2008, he beat three Top 10 players (Djokovic, Roddick and Nalbandian) and World No. 11 Blake.