Denis Shapovalov

Denis Viktorovich Shapovalov (born (1999-04-15)April 15, 1999) is a Canadian professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as world No. 10 in singles by the ATP, achieved on 21 September 2020 and a doubles ranking of No. 44, achieved on 24 February 2020. He has won four ATP Tour singles titles and produced his best Grand Slam performance at the 2021 Wimbledon Championships, where he reached the semifinals. Shapovalov is the third highest-ranked Canadian singles male player in history behind Milos Raonic (world No. 3 in 2016) and Félix Auger-Aliassime (world No. 5 in 2025).

As a junior, he ranked as high as No. 2 in the world. He won two junior Grand Slam titles, his first being the doubles title at the 2015 US Open with Auger-Aliassime and his second being the singles title at the 2016 Wimbledon Championships. As a professional, Shapovalov broke into the top 100 for the first time in 2017 after making the semi-finals of the 2017 Canadian Open; at the age of 18, he became the youngest player ever to reach the semi-final of an ATP Masters 1000 tournament. The next year, Shapovalov continued his success with a second Masters semi-final appearance at the 2018 Madrid Open and ended the year ranked inside the top 30, making him the youngest player in the group. In 2019, Shapovalov won his first ATP title at the 2019 Stockholm Open and made his first Masters finals appearance at the 2019 Paris Masters, after which he ended the year ranked No. 15. For 2020, Shapovalov reached his maiden Grand Slam quarter-final at the 2020 US Open and his fourth Masters semi-final at the 2020 Italian Open, taking him to his career-high ranking of world No. 10. He made two more tour final appearances in 2021.

With partner Rohan Bopanna, Shapovalov has also succeeded in doubles at the Grand Slam level, having reached his first quarter-final at the 2020 US Open, and the Masters level after making five quarter-finals and one semi-final. Together, they also reached their first doubles final at the 2019 Stuttgart Open, which brought Shapovalov past Adil Shamasdin to become the No. 1 Canadian doubles player. After their quarter-final appearance at the 2019 Paris Masters, he entered the top 50 in doubles for the first time. A left-handed player with a one-handed backhand, Shapovalov plays an aggressive, high-risk ground game and has some of the strongest groundstrokes on the tour, complemented by his powerful forehand and serve. He also often plays serve-and-volley to quick endpoints, which has rewarded him on faster surfaces. In recognition of his breakout tennis success in 2017, his peers on the ATP Tour voted him as the ATP Most Improved Player and ATP Star of Tomorrow. That same year, he was also awarded the Lionel Conacher Award as Canada's male athlete of the year, making him the second tennis player to have won the award since its inception in 1932.

Denis Viktorovich Shapovalov was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. His mother Tessa Shapovalova was born in Soviet Ukraine, and is a former tennis player in Israel who also played for the USSR national tennis team. She immigrated from the USSR to Tel Aviv, Israel, along with Denis' father Viktor Shapovalov during the Collapse of the Soviet Union. She eventually became a tennis coach in Vaughan, Ontario. His mother and her family are Ashkenazi Jewish (Ukrainian-Jewish), and his father's family is of Russian Orthodox Christian background. Shapovalov has one sibling, an older brother named Evgeniy, who was also born in Israel.

The family emigrated from Israel to Canada, prior to Denis' first birthday. He then resided in Vaughan, Ontario. He started playing tennis at the Richmond Hill Country Club, where his mother got a job as a coach two weeks after arriving in Toronto from Tel Aviv. Denis began playing tennis at age 5 and quickly became obsessed with the game. When it became difficult to get Denis enough time on the Richmond Hill club's courts, his mother left her job there and eventually opened her tennis academy in Vaughan, named TessaTennis, to help give him a home base to train and to teach the game to other juniors. Shapovalov attended Stephen Lewis Secondary School in Vaughan. He is nicknamed "Shapo" or "Deni".

When Shapovalov was 13, his training needs were too much for his mother to handle on her own. It was at this point that the family hired Adriano Fuorivia, a former manager of tennis development for Tennis Canada, to be his coach and travel with Shapovalov while his parents stayed home to run the academy. The relationship between Shapovalov and Adriano lasted four years, and included numerous junior and ITF futures titles, including the 2015 US Open Junior Doubles title and the 2016 Wimbledon Junior Singles title. In October 2013, Shapovalov won his first junior singles title at the ITF G5 in Burlington, Ontario. He captured his second singles title in April 2014 at the ITF G5 in Burlington. In July 2014, Shapovalov won the singles and doubles titles at the ITF G4 in San José. At the US Open in September 2015, he qualified in singles and made it to the third round for his second straight Grand Slam. In doubles, he won the title with partner Félix Auger-Aliassime. In October 2015, Shapovalov and fellow Canadians Félix Auger-Aliassime and Benjamin Sigouin captured the first Junior Davis Cup title for Canada in its history. At the French Open in May 2016, he advanced to the semi-finals in singles and the second round in doubles. At the beginning of July 2016, he captured his first G1 singles title after winning in Roehampton. A week later, Shapovalov became the third Canadian to win a junior Grand Slam singles title with a three-set victory over Alex de Minaur at the 2016 Wimbledon Championships. He also reached the doubles final with Félix Auger-Aliassime.

As a junior, he compiled a singles win-loss record of 86–32.

In late November 2015, Shapovalov won his first professional doubles title at the ITF Futures in Pensacola. In January 2016, he reached the doubles final at the ITF Futures in Sunrise. A week later, he captured his first professional singles title with a straight-set victory over Pedro Sakamoto at the ITF Futures in Weston. In March 2016, he reached the semi-finals of the Challenger Banque Nationale de Drummondville, beating his first top 100 player in Austin Krajicek before losing to Daniel Evans in three sets.