Ben Shelton drew the gentlest possible opening at the Canadian Open and, past it, the least forgiving road on the sheet. The Montreal draw was kind to him for exactly one match.
The National Bank Open draw, conducted Friday afternoon, dropped the defending champion into the most congested quarter in the bracket and then set that quarter in the same half as Alexander Zverev and Taylor Fritz. Shelton, seeded fifth, has a bye into the second round and begins his defense against fellow American Jenson Brooksby or a qualifier. Everything after that climbs sharply.
Zizou Bergs projects as a third-round opponent. The round of 16 lines up Casper Ruud or Joao Fonseca, the Brazilian teenager who has spent the season forcing his way into the game’s upper tier and who should find hard courts far more agreeable than the brief grass swing. Beyond that sits Daniil Medvedev, the fourth seed and the 2021 champion in Canada, on course for a quarterfinal meeting with the man defending the trophy.
The section holds more than that. Hubert Hurkacz is in on a protected ranking. Karen Khachanov, the player Shelton edged in three sets to take the title in Toronto last August, landed in the same quarter, as did Jakub Mensik. Jack Draper, a wild card, returns from the layoff that has kept him out since his Eastbourne semifinal run in June and meets fellow left-hander Terence Atmane in the first round. Alejandro Tabilo and Adrian Mannarino fill out one of the deepest segments any Masters 1000 draw has produced this season.
And if Shelton comes through all of it, the reward is a semifinal against the winner of the tournament’s most anticipated projected quarterfinal. Zverev is the top seed here, elevated by the absences above him, and he sits in the same quarter as Fritz. The two met at Wimbledon this month, where Zverev won in straight sets to end a seven-match losing streak against the American, resetting a rivalry Fritz had controlled for two years.
Zverev, the Roland Garros champion and the 2017 winner in Montreal, opens against Lorenzo Sonego or Tallon Griekspoor. Fritz, the seventh seed, starts against Thiago Agustin Tirante or a qualifier. Gael Monfils, playing out one of the last tournaments of a career he will close at the end of the season, and Tommy Paul are also in that section.
That leaves the top half carrying two American storylines on parallel tracks: Fritz trying to reclaim a head-to-head he lost control of on grass, and Shelton trying to protect 1,000 ranking points through a quarter that offers almost no soft landing.
The bottom half opens up by comparison. Felix Auger-Aliassime, seeded second in his hometown and still chasing a first Masters 1000 title, begins against Luca Van Assche or a qualifier, with Flavio Cobolli — who beat him at Roland Garros — projected as his quarterfinal opponent. Alex de Minaur anchors the other section, where Denis Shapovalov faces American Zachary Svajda. Gabriel Diallo, Alexis Galarneau and Liam Draxl round out the Canadian contingent.
The field arrives thinner than usual at the very top. Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic are all absent for a second consecutive year, with Alcaraz still working back from the wrist problem that has sidelined him since the spring. Those absences lifted Zverev to the top seeding and pushed the seeding line down through the rest of the draw, which is part of why Shelton’s quarter looks the way it does. With three of the sport’s biggest names out, the depth had to go somewhere, and a disproportionate share of it went into one block.
For Shelton, the stakes run past sentiment. The Toronto title was his first at Masters 1000 level and remains the biggest of his career, and defending it means getting past the man he beat in that final, a former champion in Canada and a top-10 opponent in the round of 16, all before the bracket reaches its closing weekend. He arrives in Montreal off the hard-court swing’s opening week in Washington, with the ranking cushion he built last August now due back.
The 96-player draw, with byes for all 32 seeds, runs through Aug. 13 at IGA Stadium, with main-draw play starting this weekend. What happens in it will feed directly into the US Open seeding order later this month — which, for an American group already carrying real expectations on home hard courts, raises the price of an early exit considerably.
