It is 45 years since a blond-haired Swede first took Wimbledon by storm, the arrival of Björn Borg sending fans at Wimbledon into the kind of frenzy not seen since the Beatles. It may be a stretch to say the arrival of another blond will have a similar effect at this year’s event but, when Denis Shapovalov strides through the gates of the All England Club, Wimbledon may just be seeing a future star of the sport.

Left-handed, with a good serve, brutal forehand and a dazzling one-handed backhand he often hits in mid-air, Shapovalov has already attracted a legion of fans. Junior champion at Wimbledon two years ago, the 19-year-old Canadian has a bit of everything: he is part Federer, part Nadal, part McEnroe, even part Borg, at least in the hair department.

Shapovalov spent time with both Borg and John McEnroe in the Laver Cup team exhibition event last September. Did Borg offer any tips on dealing with teenage mobs? “No, not yet,” says Shapovalov, laughing as he relaxed in Eastbourne, where he played his final warm-up event. “Maybe if I had a couple more chats with him he might. But of course, there are some similarities, especially with the flow [hair].”

It was also at the Laver Cup that Shapovalov spent some quality time with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. “Getting to know these guys, and obviously Roger in particular, it’s pretty crazy for me,” he says. “They’re not just unbelievable tennis players. They’re really nice people, too. Roger’s always given me time. He’s always stopped and said hello, spent time talking to me. For a guy like him maybe it’s nothing but for a player like me it’s huge.”

Shapovalov is part of the Next Gen, a group of players which includes Sascha Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Hyeon Chung, each of whom has already made an impact. While the generation ahead of them – players such as Grigor Dimitrov, Milos Raonic and Kei Nishikori – have all been bruised by defeats by Federer, Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, Shapovalov is free from the mental scarring. Instead, by studying them, and now playing them, he is constantly learning.

“I’ve always tried to model my game on Roger’s, trying to be aggressive, trying to be coming in, playing quick, and I’ve always tried to copy Rafa with my fighting spirit,” he said. “I’ve definitely tried to learn a lot from them and I keep trying to learn a lot from them. On the clay courts I was watching a lot of videos of Rafa, trying to see what he does as a leftie to hurt players. And on the grass I’ve been trying to watch a little bit of Rog, how he plays and why he’s so comfortable and so good on the surface.”

This time last year the Canadian had to qualify for a Challenger event in Surbiton. A win over Nadal in Montreal in August then catapulted him into the public eye and he rode the momentum to the last 16 of the US Open. He ended 2017 ranked 51 and is now the No 28 seed at Wimbledon – and could face Murray in the second round.

“It’s definitely crazy how fast I’ve come up,” Shapovalov says. “A couple of weeks and my whole life changed. It was overwhelming last year, more so than this year. Last year it was just a couple of weeks and all of a sudden I was playing these high-level tournaments with all these guys. [Now] I really feel like I belong.”

For a new kid on the block Shapovalov is humble and almost unnaturally mature (not forgetting he was defaulted when he struck a ball that hit the umpire in the eye during a Davis Cup tie against GB as a 17-year-old). Beaten in the first round in his first two grass-court events of the summer, “Shapo” knows his results are likely to be up and down for a while. But he seems to have been born for the big stage and he understands his role. “At the end of the day it’s a show,” he says. “We make money because they come to watch us. So I try to get them [the fans] into the matches and get them going sometimes.”

When Shapovalov first played on grass, at the pre-Wimbledon junior event in Roehampton in 2015, he did not even have any grass-court shoes. The following year he won junior Wimbledon. In the main draw of a grand slam event for only the fifth time he will not get carried away.

“I would love to go deep but it’s tough to set any expectations,” he says. “It’s my second time at Wimbledon as a pro, so it’s not like I’m expecting anything crazy. I’m just going to try to take it one match at a time and hopefully I can go far. But if I don’t, there will be next year. I’m so young and there are so many chances.”