Philip Bester, Frank Dancevic, Filip Peliwo and Vasek Pospisil awarded entry into Montreal main draw; Francoise Abanda, Gabriela Dabrowski, and Carol Zhao receive ticket to Toronto event
Toronto, August 5, 2015 – Tennis Canada announced on Wednesday the wild cards for the 2015 Rogers Cup presented by National Bank in Toronto and Montreal. The four wild cards for the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournament in Montreal are going to Canadians Philip Bester (North Vancouver), Frank Dancevic (Niagara Falls, Ont.), Filip Peliwo (Vancouver), and Vasek Pospisil (Vancouver), while the three wild cards available for the WTA Premier 5 main draw in Toronto have been awarded to Francoise Abanda (Montreal), Gabriela Dabrowski (Ottawa), and Carol Zhao (Richmond Hill, Ont.).
The seven players join fellow Canadians Milos Raonic (Thornhill, Ont.) and Eugenie Bouchard (Montreal) in their respective tournaments, with the two top-ranked players in the country having earned direct entry into the main draw.
Starting the year ranked No. 582, Bester jumped to a new career-high ranking of No. 225 last week after making the final of the $100K Granby National Bank Challenger. This year, Bester has also won two $15,000 ITF Pro Circuit titles. Currently ranked No. 228, he will be competing in his fourth Rogers Cup main draw and first since 2007.
Dancevic will be playing in his 13th Rogers Cup main draw. He was a quarter-finalist at his home country’s tournament back in 2007, losing to Rafael Nadal. This will be his second ATP main draw of the season after qualifying for Zagreb earlier this year. His best result on the year is reaching the final of the Drummondville Challenger in March. He is currently world No. 257.
World No. 526 Peliwo recently made his Davis Cup debut in Canada’s quarter-final tie against Belgium. Earlier this year, he captured his second career pro-level title at a $10,000 Futures event in France. The 2012 Junior Wimbledon and US Open champion, his career-high ranking is No. 223. This will be his second Rogers Cup main draw, after having reached the second round in 2013.
At world No. 49, Pospisil is the second-highest ranked Canadian male singles player. He had one of the best results of his career at Rogers Cup two years ago, making the semifinals in Montreal. He recently advanced into the Wimbledon quarter-finals for his most impressive career performance at a major, which pushed his ranking back up to No. 29, close to his career-high of No. 25. He has advanced out of the first round of Rogers Cup in three of the past four years.
Currently ranked world No. 324, 18-year-old Abanda is a former junior standout who picked up her first Top 30 win at Canada’s Fed Cup tie versus Romania earlier this year. She made her Slam debut last year, becoming the youngest Canadian since 1987 to make the US Open main draw. In her first Rogers Cup main draw, also last year, she pushed then-world No. 12 Dominika Cibulkova to three sets in the first round.
At world No. 230, Dabrowski is the second-highest ranked women’s singles player in Canada. She will be competing in the Rogers Cup singles main draw for the first time in her career. Also the nation’s highest-ranked WTA doubles player at No. 47, she was a doubles semifinalist in Toronto two years ago. Dabrowski recently won two medals at the TO2015 Pan Am Games – gold in women’s doubles with Zhao and silver in mixed doubles with Bester.
The No. 2-ranked athlete in NCAA Division I tennis, Zhao is ranked No. 371 on the WTA circuit. The Stanford University student-athlete advanced through qualifying in Toronto two years ago to make her first WTA main draw. She won her Rogers Cup wild card thanks to her performances at the Granby and Gatineau Challengers over the past few weeks, earning the most points at the two tournaments of any Canadian female player.
Wild cards into the qualifying tournaments were also awarded. In Montreal, they were presented to Peter Polansky (Thornhill, Ont.), Brayden Schnur (Pickering, Ont.), David Volfson (Toronto), and Latvian Ernests Gulbis. In Toronto, Sharon Fichman (Toronto), Katherine Sebov (Toronto), Heidi El Tabakh (Toronto), and Charlotte Robillard-Millette (Blainville, Que.) will now be competing for places in the main draw. Two WTA qualifying spots remain and will be presented to the two winners of a pre-qualifying tournament taking place this week at Aviva Centre.
The 2015 Rogers Cup presented by National Bank will take place August 8-16 at Aviva Centre in Toronto and August 7-16 at Uniprix Stadium in Montreal. The qualifying rounds of both tournaments run over the first weekend, August 8 and 9, while main draw action commences on Monday August 10. Tickets are available for as low as $15 and can be purchased at rogerscup.com or by calling 1-877-283-6647 ext. 4333 (Toronto) and 1-855-836-6470 (Montreal).
