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Who's your all time favorite Canadian player?

  • Grant Connell

    Votes: 2 22.2%
  • Sebastien Lareau

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Daniel Nestor

    Votes: 5 55.6%
  • Frank Dancevic

    Votes: 1 11.1%
  • Milos Raonic

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Glenn Michibata

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Vasek Pospisil

    Votes: 1 11.1%
  • Martin Laurendeau

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Andrew Snazjder

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Other (please specify)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

Who's your all time favorite Canadian player?

4K views 12 replies 7 participants last post by  Transcender 
#1 · (Edited)
Discuss. I will put up a poll. Each player has cracked the top 100 in their careers, some of them even cracking the top 50 (michibata, snazjder, raonic). so go vote and discuss whos your favorite player and why? If he's not listed on the choice, vote other and specify why?

For me, I pick Daniel Nestor. I was always a fan of his serve and volley style tennis. Back in his late 20s, he was awesome and even made the 4th round at Wimbledon 1999. The best showing for a Canadian actually.

-Grant Connell was a top 3 doubles specialist in the world. He cracked the top 70 at his peak. He even made the quarterfinals of the Rogers Cup and was instrumental in taking Canada to the Davis Cup world group for the first time ever.
-Glenn Michibata was also a doubles specilist and cracked top 50 in singles.
-Martin Laurendeau was a former top 100 player, the current Davis Cup coach and also made the 4th round at the US Open (best showing ever for a Canadian)
-Sebastien Lareau was a doubles specialist and a former top 100 player. He was the first Canadian to win a Grand Slam in doubles at the 1999 US Open. He also captured the gold metal at the Sydney 2000 Olympics with Nestor.
-Frank Dancevic is a former top 100 player and made the quarterfinals of the Rogers Cup. He is also two time finalist on the ATP Level and played a key role in helping Canada qualify for Davis Cup world group in 2005.
-Andrew Snazjer is a former top 50 player and at one time, was the highest ranked Canadian player ever. He also made the quarterfinals of the Rogers Cup in 1989.
-Vasek Pospisil is a former top 100 player and is currently in the top 200. He was instrumental in helping Canada qualify for the Davis Cup world group.
-Milos Raonic is our current no.1 player and by far, our most accomplished singles player ever. He is also the highest ranked player ever. He has won 3 titles so far, the most so far if you don't include Greg Rusedski. He is Canada's best hope in a long time to win a Grand Slam in singles.

There are also other Canadian players who played the game as well, former top 100 & 200 players like Chris Pridham, Martin Wostenholme, Frederic Niemeyer, Albert Chang, Simon Larose, Rejean Genois, Kevin Carpenter, Robert Bedard, etc.
I don't mention Rusedski simply because he switched from Canada to Great Britain.

anyways, discuss. whos your favorite all time player?
 
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#5 ·
I'll go with Grant Connell. Great Davis Cup effort against the Netherlands in 1990, and again against Gustafsson in 1992. I'm also allowing myself to give him credit for what he did after he stopped playing, like being Davis Cup captain and his work for the Canadian Open. Nestor deserves a lot of votes as well.
 
#6 ·
I've only followed tennis maybe since 04 so I basically only know the current crop of players. I'd have to say Dancevic is probably the one who's results I've been more nervous about throughout the years, he was the top player for quite a while. Now a days I don't care for him as much as others, but all time it's probably him.

Filip will soon be getting up there though. I like how he's very open with his fans, talks t them on twitter, joined that forum a couple months back to answer questions, etc. Plus he seems like he could be a fairly good player in the future, had quite an awesome year this year.
 
#12 ·
Natural tennis ability is really just structured practice. A player practices for 10,000 hours for example, his game looks natural, but that isn't talent, it is practice.

Athletic ability is something that is worked on and can be affected hugely by what an individual does. Basketball Canada has a program called the long-term athlete development plan, which can be found below. Again, with some guidance, this is hard work.

LTAD: http://www.basketball.ca/ltad-s15158

I don't really know what you mean by sporting ability? Do you mean mental training? That is again discussed in the LTAD for basketball, I am sure tennis coaches have something similar. I don't coach tennis.

Hand-Eye Ability is spacial awareness, and again is developed by hard work.

There is no such this as talent. Talent is a word that is used by those who did not work hard enough for whatever reason (often out of their control), or those who did not have proper coaching at the proper age. There is of course some luck involved in becoming a top athlete, for example, height, eyesight, things like that, but hard work is what produces what we see, not a magical thing called talent. :)
 
#13 · (Edited)
Not quite, it's not all practice and teaching, some things you just can't teach, which is natural talent, it's well known, practice improves what you already have, like for Federer tennis just comes naturally, he doesn't need to be told what to do.

Players like Tsonga and Monfils have natural athletic ability.

If you think that it's all just hard work then why does Ferrer have to work much harder than most players to be a good player, it's cause he doesn't have very good natural ability no matter how much work he puts in, he'll never have for instance a FH as good as Rafa's no matter how hard he tries, it just won't happen cause Rafa has a natural ability to do what he does, something that just can't be taught or worked on, that's just down to ability, not how much work is done, Rafa can simply do things Ferrer can't, not every player can do everything, there are limits to their abilities.
 
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