Can Raonic Outmerit Shapovalov For Team World Spot At Laver Cup

| by Kadir Macar

This year's Laver Cup will be held in Vancouver, Canada and could we possibly see Milos Raonic play for Team World?

Each year's Laver Cup is held in a different location. One year it's in Europe, the home soil of Team Europe while the other year it's somewhere in the rest of the world. Mostly it's held in countries where some of the Team World players come from. This year it's in Vancouver, Canada and we'll likely see some Canadian players there.

We know some of the players that signed up for this year's edition of the event. For Team Europe we have Stefanos Tsitsipas, Holger Rune, Andrey Rublev, and most recently signed up Casper Ruud. For Team World we have Frances Tiafoe, Nick Kyrgios, Taylor Fritz, and of course Felix Auger-Alaissime.

The Canadian feels rather comfortable in red colours, and he'll certainly see many of them in Vancouver. There is a very good chance that another spot in Team World will go to a Canadian and that's where we game begins. Who will it be?

Well, Denis Shapovalov is a good example of someone who might be in contention as the Canadian already participated in the event. However, his season was quite bad so far with only 9 wins in 20 matches and perhaps he might follow the example of Medvedev and play some tournaments instead.

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He has some big points to defend in the latter part of the year with a final in Seoul and a semi-final in Tokyo last year. With his ranking already down a bit (29) Shapovalov might opt to hunt points and not Laver Cup glory.

There is another worthy candidate who might be open to participating in the event. Former Top 3 player Milos Raonic recently made his comeback and did well. He expressed a lot of gratitude after taking the courts again as he didn't really focus much on tennis while he was battling injuries.

What drove him back was the desire to have a proper farewell. He knows that serious tennis is behind him as his body can't really sustain it but he wanted to play Wimbledon at least one more time and the Canadian Open.

It's in Toronto, pretty close to where he grew up so that was meaningful to him. While he's largely okay with stepping away from tennis a chance to play one more big event on home soil might sway him. There aren't many Canadian events and this is likely his last dance. So why not do it in Vancouver?

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