Friends to the End

The Canadian teenagers Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime have been playing tennis with and against each other for years. They believe they will be doing so for years to come.

But on Monday they met for the first time in a tour-level match.

Auger-Aliassime, who turned 18 this month, qualified for the Open and was playing his first main-draw singles match at a major. Unfortunately for him, he had to face his friend Shapovalov, 19, who was the breakout star of last year’s U.S. Open.

They delighted the Grandstand crowd for two and a half hours, with each player occasionally leaping to connect with powerful groundstrokes.

But after splitting the first two sets in muggy conditions, Auger-Aliassime began to falter. He considered retiring from the match early in the third set, only to have Shapovalov encourage him to keep going. But a few games later, with Shapovalov leading by 7-5, 5-7, 4-1, Auger-Aliassime could not go on.

As Auger-Aliassime began to cry, Shapovalov came over to embrace him and then sat down in the chair next to him to talk. He said he was having heart palpitations, and he had nearly fainted.

“I told him at the net hopefully one day we’ll be playing in the finals of this tournament,” Shapovalov, the No. 28 seed, said. “I told him to keep his head up. We’re going to have so many matches together. Obviously it’s never easy playing against him because he’s such a close friend of mine.”

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