Yes, there was a tennis tournament in Montreal, not just Toronto. Even though Bianca Andreescu rightly made national news in Canada by winning the Rogers Cup, there WAS in fact another event in Quebec: the Coupe Rogers. Rafael Nadal took care of business.

He took care of business very quietly and efficiently all week.

There was only one Big 3 player in French Canada. Novak Djokovic didn’t need to play Montreal because he won Wimbledon and has 1,000 points to defend in Cincinnati. Roger Federer didn’t need to play Montreal because he came within one point of winning Wimbledon and has a loaded schedule after the U.S. Open.

No problem, Rafa said. The Big 3’s control over men’s tennis depended on one man at IGA Stadium and the Jarry Park tennis complex. Nadal was more than up to the task.

Don’t devalue Nadal’s title. Nadal has won five of these things now. He can play ball on hardcourts today; he could play yesterday. Even a decade ago, he was winning Masters 1000 titles on cement.

He is a kick-butt player on any surface.

His otherworldly clay prowess doesn’t diminish his hardcourt record; it masks how great his hardcourt record actually is:

The fifth player with 450 ATP wins on hard, 19 Masters 1000 finals and 10 titles. One of six players with most Grand Slam finals on hard and one of seven with most titles

— YoungTennisGuns (@YoungTennisGuns) August 12, 2019

The takeaway from Montreal in terms of judging ATP players is not that Rafa is somehow lucky or diminished. What a galaxy-brain take that is.

The takeaway is that the rest of the tour isn’t yet ready to move in on the Big 3’s turf and overthrow the legends.

What is unfortunate here is that Montreal — as is often the case — is left holding the bag, with Cincinnati scooping up the loot as the main U.S. Open lead-in.

We need to underscore a point: While Rafael Nadal enhanced his career this past week (a small enhancement, but an enhancement nonetheless), the Coupe Rogers lost some of its luster… and not just because of the lack of a roof, documented a week ago at this very website:

I wrote a 3-part series at @ItsDeanBlundell on Tennis Canada's continuing effort to put a roof over IGA Stadium in Montreal at the Coupe Rogers:

1 https://t.co/EEpbQlzg2Z
2https://t.co/hfWOl705ao
3https://t.co/ddBDk1qK3x

Many pieces to this puzzle, oui? Oui. #OuiTweets

— Matt Zemek (@mzemek) August 9, 2019

The aspect of the Coupe Rogers in Montreal (Rogers Cup in Toronto) which needs to change — not every year, but some years — is that it needs to come one week AFTER Cincinnati.

It is pathetic — though not surprising at all — that the larger sport of tennis has not been able to make this happen.

Let’s be clear: I am not saying the Rogers Cup should ALWAYS be after Cincinnati, but it should be after Cincinnati half the time, or at least one year out of every three or four.

In particular, Toronto — as the ATP site in even-numbered years — gets hosed in Olympic years. Players are preparing for the Olympics, so the Rogers Cup is left in the cold, as it was in 2016 and 2012.

Even in the non-Olympic years, though, the Rogers Cup/Coupe Rogers has suffered.

When Roger Federer played Montreal in 2017, that was his first visit since 2011. The demands of the tour on an aging body — combined with the fact that Canada is only three weeks after Wimbledon — made it unrealistic for Federer to regularly attend Canada.

If the sport of tennis really wanted tournaments — more precisely, the two main North American tournaments preceding the U.S. Open — to get equal shares of the riches the Big 3 put into tennis coffers, Toronto/Montreal would alternate with Cincinnati in terms of “most favored tournament status” before the U.S. Open.

In 2016, with Canada coming before the Olympics, one would think that in 2020, Cincinnati could precede the Olympics. Nope. Won’t happen.

In 2021, after years of Montreal (ATP) preceding Cincinnati and usually missing out on Federer and Djokovic more than Ohio (2017 being the exception, not the rule), one would think that Cincy could be first after Wimbledon, and Montreal second. (2021, with Federer turning 40 years old, might be Roger’s grand finale.)

Don’t expect it to happen.

Rafael Nadal is simply phenomenal. Aka, “Phenomenadal.” Don’t view him as the reason the 2019 Coupe Rogers in Montreal fell flat. It’s more a matter of Canada always having to be the lead-in to Cincinnati, instead of tennis using some common sense and incorporating both balance and fairness into its annual tennis calendar.

I hope you enjoyed my coverage of Rogers Cup/Coupe Rogers week. I am regretful that I had to end my coverage of Canada’s biggest tennis week on such a sour note… but that’s life sometimes.

It’s tennis MOST of the time, if you didn’t know already.