FranÇoise Abanda is the first product of a new approach to athlete development in Canadian tennis, and as she readies for her debut season on the pro circuit, the future of the sport in this country looks brighter than ever

By Dave Zarum in Montreal
Photobraphy by Guillaume Simoneau

iny flashes of fluorescent yellow rocket around a group of outdoor courts. It’s a little after nine on a cloudy Montreal morning in June, and the athletes at Tennis Canada’s National Training Centre are already well into their first practice. Adjacent to a sprawling dog park and surrounded by well-worn metal fencing, the courts are wholly unremarkable. The same cannot be said of the handful of teenagers playing on them, some of whom will grow up to become Canada’s next tennis superstars.

The grandstands of Uniprix Stadium, one of the two venues that host the country’s premier pro tennis event, hang over the courts—a not-so-subtle reminder of where the game can take these kids. Inside, Françoise Abanda steps to the baseline and tosses a ball high into the air, connecting with it just as the flash goes off. The junior tennis standout is practising her serve, undeterred by a camera crew hovering nearby. Each shot sounds like a bomb detonating, the sound echoing through the empty bleachers. The letters “WTA” are painted in bold white along the sideline, and “MONTREAL” adorns the baseline a few feet behind the imposing five-foot-eleven Abanda.

She shuffles her feet intently, exchanging service-line shots with coach Sylvain Bruneau, Canada’s Fed Cup captain. Bruneau, a no-nonsense type, has overseen Abanda’s development since she first joined the National Training Centre at 11. Now 18, the Montreal native is the longest-tenured athlete at the facility—as one Tennis Canada staffer puts it, “she’s like part of the furniture.”

As Abanda rallies with Bruneau, each shot comes heavy off her racket, deep and consistent. Make or miss, her expression, a steady stare, rarely changes. In a sport dominated by yo-yo personalities, Abanda is almost eerily even-keeled. She’s been doing this her whole life, after all, spending hours a day hitting the ball since she was practically a toddler.

While pros like Eugenie Bouchard and Milos Raonic have spent time training at the NTC, which was established in 2007 with the stated purpose of placing more Canadians in the world’s top 150, Abanda is the first high-profile talent to go all the way from pup to pro at the Montreal facility. In the process, she’s built up an impressive resumé. At 12, she won a major international tournament, and in her teens was ranked in the top 10 worldwide among juniors. At 17, she squared off against one of her idols, Venus Williams, and put up a valiant fight. That same year she became the youngest Canadian to ever reach the main draw at the U.S. Open. And this past April she defeated a top-30 player while representing Canada at the Fed Cup.

But as Abanda readies to jump to the WTA Tour full-time next year, that early success is proving as much a burden as a sign of greatness to come. “You come out of the juniors,” she says, “and regardless of what you’ve done, you’re nothing at the pros. You have to rebuild and start all over again.”

ver and over the ball ricocheted off the living room wall in the Abanda family’s Montreal apartment. The neighbours called to complain—often—but there was little anyone could do to get five-year-old Françoise to put her racket down. Her sister, Elisabeth, three years older, had just been introduced to tennis by a local coach. “I was always following whatever my big sister did,” says Abanda. The girls’ interest in the sport caused their mother, Cecile, who hails from Cameroon, to bring Françoise and Elisabeth to tennis camps. Too young to join her sister on the court and without anyone her age to practise against, Abanda would hit against a brick wall on her own, playing out matches in her mind, before doing the same as soon as they returned home. “I just kept hitting to prove that I could play tennis,” she says.

Finally, despite Françoise being considerably younger than everyone else, Cecile put her into camps as well. Though she always preferred games to one-on-one drills, Françoise, like Elisabeth, proved a quick study, aided in part by her athletic stature and long arms, which gave her natural power. The Abanda sisters soon began entering small, in-province tournaments. It wasn’t long before the two were winning far more matches than they lost. “When you win and you’re that young, it’s fun,” says Abanda. “So I kept going. I didn’t just wake up and decide I wanted to be a tennis player—the results were there. I was enjoying it, but it was only after a year or two of playing that I got really serious about it.”

Across town at the Montreal headquarters of Tennis Canada, the sporting federation was getting more serious about the game, too. Canada had produced a handful of successful pros over the years, headlined by Daniel Nestor, but those stars had been forced to hone their games without the help of a true developmental program. In 2006, Tennis Canada named Michael Downey its president. A businessman with no tennis background, Downey took the job with two goals in mind: to get more kids playing the game nationally and to invest in a full-time professional training program. “When you look at someone like Daniel Nestor, he did it all on his own,” says Downey, who left to run Britain’s tennis federation in 2013. “We didn’t really give him financial support because we didn’t have a system in place.”

One of Downey’s first moves was to bring in Louis Borfiga, a former head coach in the French tennis federation, to help oversee the new National Training Centre. “Before, everybody was training all over the place,” says Borfiga. “My first goal was to group the best players in the same place with the same coaches.”

Having guided the likes of top-20 players Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Gael Monfils and Gilles Simon, Borfiga immediately brought an air of legitimacy and an increased intensity to the program. “Everybody here was playing to play, not playing to win,” he says of his first impressions of Canada. “We had to change that mentality.”

Canadian players had traditionally been responsible for finding and paying coaches, and covering global travel expenses and the host of other costs that come with a career in the sport. The new development program opened the doors for a country of young players who couldn’t have dreamed of pursuing tennis full-time. A 17-year old Milos Raonic was part of the first group of 10 invited to the NTC. So, too, was 13-year-old Elisabeth Abanda, who had built a name for herself by winning a number of under-12 tournaments throughout the country. “Everyone was kind of skeptical at first,” says Elisabeth. “Even parents were like, ‘I don’t know if I should send my kids there.’”

For Cecile, though, a single mother committed to helping her kids follow their tennis dreams but lacking the financial resources to do so, it was a no-brainer. This was likely the only way her kids would have a shot. Two years after Elisabeth, Françoise was invited to be a part of the NTC. Shortly before her 12th birthday, she joined her sister, as well as future Junior Wimbledon champions Filip Peliwo and Eugenie Bouchard.

Abanda was the youngest athlete in the program by nearly three years, but from the moment she arrived her abilities turned heads. “In modern women’s tennis it’s very important to hit the ball with pace, with heaviness,” says Bruneau. “And she’s always been able to do that with minimal effort. She’s very economical with her groundstrokes, so she’s able to hit a tremendous ball. And she’s a true competitor.”

Within two years Abanda was dominating the junior ranks, her poise as evident in each powerful stroke as it is today. In 2009, she won the Orange Bowl, considered one of the top junior tournaments in the world. That same year Elisabeth won the U-16 nationals. Françoise took home that crown the following year, at just 13 years of age. She won a total of 18 tournaments that season. “Françoise went from being one of the best 12-year-olds in Quebec to the best 14-year-old in the world,” says Ralph Platz, who coached Abanda her first two years at the NTC, and currently guides world top-five junior and NTC athlete Charlotte Robillard-Millette.

A shoulder injury limited Abanda for the better part of two years. When she returned, she climbed from out of the top 100 to fourth in the world junior ranking, something she considers a disappointment today. She says she should have been No. 1.

Abanda was the youngest athlete in the program by nearly three years, but from the moment she arrived her abilities turned heads. “In modern women’s tennis it’s very important to hit the ball with pace, with heaviness,” says Bruneau. “And she’s always been able to do that with minimal effort. She’s very economical with her groundstrokes, so she’s able to hit a tremendous ball. And she’s a true competitor.”

Within two years Abanda was dominating the junior ranks, her poise as evident in each powerful stroke as it is today. In 2009, she won the Orange Bowl, considered one of the top junior tournaments in the world. That same year Elisabeth won the U-16 nationals. Françoise took home that crown the following year, at just 13 years of age. She won a total of 18 tournaments that season. “Françoise went from being one of the best 12-year-olds in Quebec to the best 14-year-old in the world,” says Ralph Platz, who coached Abanda her first two years at the NTC, and currently guides world top-five junior and NTC athlete Charlotte Robillard-Millette.

A shoulder injury limited Abanda for the better part of two years. When she returned, she climbed from out of the top 100 to fourth in the world junior ranking, something she considers a disappointment today. She says she should have been No. 1.

banda collapses into a chair in the tennis centre’s cafeteria. After nearly two hours in the empty Uniprix Stadium, her on-court practice was forced to a close by a nagging foot injury. The Pan Am Games are around the corner, and neither she nor Bruneau wants to risk re-aggravating anything.

A spacious, open-concept design, the café overlooks half a dozen indoor hard courts where, on this day, Tennis Quebec is holding a well-attended coaches conference. On a far court, a group of retirees plays doubles, while in the pro shop a few metres away, a technician applies new strings to Abanda’s racket. Open to the public, this is where a local player and the best tennis talent Canada has to offer coexist.

Partially in response to the success of up-and-coming stars like Bouchard, Raonic and Vasek Pospisil, the tennis centre underwent a $13-million facelift in 2010. A host of indoor courts were added and upgraded fitness facilities were put in place for NTC athletes. “I can tell you that they really improved [the training centre] from the time I was there to what Françoise is doing right now,” says Elisabeth, who recently graduated from Barry University in Miami, where she was an all-conference player on the tennis team. “There’s more individual attention now—a lot more. Plus, better facilities, better scheduling, the players are playing in better tournaments. My group was the experiment, almost, but now we know what to do with Françoise’s career.”

For those who hadn’t charted her junior success, the U.S. Open exposure was flat-out revelatory. Abanda lost only six games total through three qualifying matches before being ousted by Germany’s Sabine Lisicki in the first round. (“She serves so hard!”) Despite the loss, Abanda says the Open gave her meaningful experience, not just against top-ranked pros but performing in front of big crowds. “It’s all part of the long process to get to where I want to go.”

But neither that U.S. Open draw, her first ITF title last January or her Fed Cup win earlier this year quite compare to the Coupe Bank tournament in Quebec City last September, when, at 17 years old, Abanda narrowly fell to 34-year-old Venus Williams, 7-5, 6-3. “I expected a really competitive match,” Williams said afterwards, “because I’ve seen Françoise play.”

Watching at home, Abanda’s family couldn’t believe what they were seeing. “I thought Venus would kick my sister’s ass,” Elisabeth says with a laugh.

The rest of the NTC kids, a group that includes Robillard-Millette and Pan Am competitor Brayden Schnur, file into the club for lunch. While they looked like a collection of fledgling superheroes outside on the courts—think of the NTC as Tennis Canada’s take on Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters—they’re just normal kids now, huddled around a table cracking jokes. When they aren’t playing tournaments around the globe, a typical day here in Montreal begins with on-court training at 8:30 and ends back on the tennis court around 7 p.m. At night, it’s home to their billet families, then back the next day for more.

It’s the same routine Abanda has adhered to practically as far back as she can remember, though at the end of each tiring day she takes solace knowing she can return to her own bed. “I’m lucky in that the NTC is at home for me. But a lot of the other athletes coming from Toronto or Vancouver are leaving home young, so it’s tough. You don’t have your friends, your family. Sometimes I’m sure they wish they could be back home,” she says. “But you can’t have it all.”

Abanda heads upstairs to the gym that overlooks a group of indoor courts for her daily fitness training. The rest of the athletes head to the classroom, where, under the supervision of André Barette, a former high school teacher and Rogers Cup volunteer who now oversees their education, each studies via online courses from their home province. On the wall is a giant world map dotted with pins that represent the various places this group has competed so far this year. It’s so full you can barely make out the countries.

Barette is particularly proud that nearly 90 percent of NTC athletes have gone on to a college education. When asked about Abanda’s dedication in the classroom, he pauses to find the right words, and Robillard-Millette lets out a giggle. “Françoise is rare,” Barette says, “in that she is extremely focused in her end goal and what she wants to accomplish in tennis.”

In other words, nothing takes precedence over her career. “She’s in her bubble,” says Simon Larose, a former standout singles player and Abanda’s coach for the past three years. “She has an idea of where she wants to go and follows that. Of course she still listens to the people around her, but I have to say she’s very determined to follow her path. She was destined for this.”

Elisabeth agrees: “She’s not done with school, but she’s going at her own pace. She’s more into tennis, let’s put it that way. That’s one trait that people notice: She goes after what she wants and doesn’t take no as an answer.”

What Abanda wants right now is a smooth transition to the next stage of her career. She knows the success she regularly enjoyed as a junior won’t immediately follow her to the pros, but is determined that next year won’t be like this past one, which has been a roller coaster. The high of her Fed Cup win was closely followed by a pair of first-round exits; then there was the foot injury that continues to hamper her, and a frustrating paperwork error that kept her out of a recent tournament in Texas.

To help smooth things out, in May the federation elected to split Abanda from Larose, who has been key in helping develop girls up to the point where they’re ready to jump from the junior circuit to the next level. Tennis Canada is looking for a new voice to help her adjust to the WTA tour, and for the time being it belongs to Bruneau, who has coached at 44 Grand Slams—a valuable resource who expects the best out of his athletes. “For her to be in that match at the U.S. Open, or to win at Fed Cup, it’s no surprise,” Bruneau says. “I expect that. To be honest, I think she can do it more often. That’s how much I believe in her.”

He admits that if she’s going to be a force at the next level her serve will have to improve, along with her on-court mobility. “We have discussions on me wanting her to spend more time in the gym. When you’re as athletic as she is, you can decide to bring it to an extraordinary level,” Bruneau says. “Make your fitness a weapon. Don’t just rely on what you already have to be good.”

Finding that drive may be Abanda’s biggest obstacle going forward, especially after a junior career in which success came so easily—at least compared to what she’s up against now. “I’m learning that at the top level you have to be present, 100 percent, every point—you can’t get away with stuff. In the juniors, you could kind of do whatever and you could still win. A lot of girls would give the match away in juniors. They’d give you points, get discouraged easily,” she says. “In the pros, it’s like every point, every detail is perfect. Everything has to be perfect.”

There are no guarantees in tennis. The sport is unforgiving, particularly in singles. It’s lonely. It’s emotional. And the odds of successfully making the jump from junior to pro are traditionally slim; there’s a long list of top-ranked youth players who never amounted to anything in the game past their teenage years.

Abanda knows this. She’s accomplished everything a player her age can dream of. After more than a decade of committing her life to the game of tennis, now the real work begins.

This story originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine.