Francoise Abanda. Credit: Tennis Canada
At a leafy municipal park 35 kilometres east of downtown Montreal, the future of Canadian tennis has gathered to lash tennis balls toward one another at alarming velocity.
While some of the finest professional women's tennis players in the world show their wares at Stade Uniprix in north-end Montreal, the country's up-and-comers have taken over a quartet of hard-courts for the late stages of the Canadian under-16 national championships.
The modest aluminum stands are populated mostly by players, parents and coaches. On the far court, a coltish 13-year-old trades punishing ground strokes with a player two years her elder. The teenager in question, Françoise Abanda, will shortly begin her second year at the National Tennis Centre's development program, and stands as one of the brighter prospects in an emerging generation of Canadians drawing notice in some tennis circles.
"It happens that I'll have coaches from foreign countries come up to me and say, 'There's a lot going on in Canada.' I don't think they're saying it just to be nice," said Louis Borfiga, Tennis Canada's vice-president of high-performance development.
Though Abanda, who is already 5-foot-10, was the youngest competitor in the under-16 tournament, she has earned a berth in the final.
It stands as the most successful result for any national-team player this week. None of the four Canadian women in the main draw of this week's Rogers Cup progressed beyond the first round. Only one won a set.
If the senior women's program has hit a bumpy patch, the juniors are busy building up their tournament experience.
Elisabeth Abanda, Françoise's 16-year-old sister, played in qualifying this week at the Rogers Cup, as did Eugenie Bouchard of Westmount, Que., (the top-ranked 16-year-old in the country), and 18-year-old Gabriela Dabrowski of Ottawa (ranked first in Canada and eighth in the world junior ratings).
Though none of them made it to the main draw, any occasion to share the court with pros is worthwhile.
"It's a different ball, a lot heavier, you can really see the difference," said Bouchard, who battled shin splints this week.
Despite her youth, the gifted Bouchard is well versed in the rigours of touring. She spends roughly eight months a year on the road, which has become a key component of player development.
"When I was nine, I qualified for an under-12 tournament in France, and that's when I realized, 'Oh, I really want to do this [for a living]'" said Bouchard, who turned pro last year and will play in the junior U.S. Open next month.
Françoise Abanda began travelling abroad only this year, and this week's tourney was her first real taste of the Rogers Cup. She and her sister trained on site and benefited from access to the players' lounge.
"I'm used to going into the showers and seeing other players at my club, but here you look up and it's [world No. 1]Kim Clijsters," Françoise said.
The current crop of NTC juniors - the Abanda sisters, Bouchard, Dabrowski, 17-year-old Marianne Jodoin of Varennes, Que., and 16-year-old Elianne Douglas-Morin of Ottawa - are an integral part of Borfiga's medium-term plan to bolster Canada's representation in the top 100 (the only one at the moment, Aleksandra Wozniak, sits 53rd).
Part of the problem, he said, is the typical tennis neophytes in Canada are 11 or 12 when they take up the game - too old for serious development.
In that regard, players like Bouchard and the Abanda sisters are signs of progress.
Elisabeth Abanda started playing at seven, her sister started hitting balls against the wall at six. Their Cameroon-born mother, Cécile Essono, says they initially took skating lessons. "I was happy when they switched, arenas are too cold," she said.
Bouchard and her twin sister, Beatrice, began playing at five.
Early training is key, Borfiga said, because otherwise "you're setting limits on players physically and technically."
But detractors of the Tennis Canada hierarchy point out that financial resources and grand plans to centralize the high-performance program are no guarantee of success. England's Lawn Tennis Association, after all, is the wealthiest tennis federation in the world and has produced only two professional players of note - Tim Henman and Andy Murray - in the last 20 years.
That doesn't bother Borfiga, who reckons his plan will require a decade or more and said "it will be up to one of my successors to collect the fruits of what we're doing."
Development of top talent in any sport is an inexact science, but handicapping professional success on the basis of junior tennis achievements is roughly as reliable as predicting next year's weather.
"It's a very long road, lots can happen," said the French-born Borfiga. "Do you master the machine, or does it chew you up? That's the question."
Still, the Abanda sisters have invited the inevitable comparison to the most illustrious siblings in women's tennis, Serena and Venus Williams, and some within Tennis Canada quietly believe Françoise Abanda could be top-20 material.
Last December she won the prestigious Orange Bowl tournament's under-12 category. Dabrowski won the under-18 title, the first Canadian to do so since Carling Bassett-Seguso in 1982.
On Thursday, Abanda bested top-seeded 15-year-old Carol Zhao of Richmond Hill, Ont., fighting back a stiff challenge in the second set. Zhao has recently appeared on the national-team radar along with 15-year-old Kimberly-Ann Surin of Blainville, Que.
"I know I still need to work on every aspect of my game, but I want to play on the [WTA]tour," Françoise said. "I've followed in my sister's footsteps all the way along, I don't think either of us thought we could get to this level, but now that we're here, our dream would be to play on the professional circuit."
On Friday morning, she stepped onto centre court at Uniprix with 15-year-old Evangeline Repic of Oakville, Ont., to play for the national title.
Before the match was 20 minutes old, Abanda was up 3-0. She cruised to a 6-2, 6-1 victory.