Guillermo Cañas back on the tennis circus

The Return of Guillermo Cañas

The tough Argentine Cañas is making his return to the ATP tour on Monday after getting his suspension for taking a masking agent reduced by the Court of Arbritration by 9 months. For those who have not read the verdict, there is a full PDF file on the case, but this is the short version on the ITF site about the case. At the same time the people who still think he is guilty, this proves below why the CAS chose to uphold his appeal. It's not in their interests to favour athletes for the sake of it. There were faults within some part of the process and if there wasn't, then the case would have been dismissed.

http://www.itftennis.com/antidoping...le.asp?id=16515


Cañas has been training very hard and obviously with the time out and having to deal with some negativity and it will obviously take him time to come back into the swing of things and he will have to be more vigilant when it comes to supplements and if he is feeling crap at any point, then declare on the forms that he is taking something and then he can cover his own arse. At the same time as much I am happy to see him back, he can't be stupid again when it comes to this sort of thing and there will be definitely an air of suspicion around the locker room, while he has received the support of many players especially fellow Argentines and others, but there will be dissenting voices as well.


Willy has a new coach the former doubles specialist Gaston Etlis, it is not surprising that he and Hernan Gumy split afterwards, it wouldn't surprise if it had something to do with the case, at the same time the coaching world is like a transit lounge, so many changes in a short time, though there are some exceptions to this. I wonder if Cañas has improved his backhand drive, cause that was something I noticed he wasn't hitting that as well, he has an outstanding backhand passing shot, but with the wrist problem it seems he doesn't hit it with enough penetration or spin and it ends up landing short and he can be punished on that side.


This experience will make Cañas even more determined than he was previously and I have many good memories of watching this matches and he has been in so many battles, some he has lost and others he has won. He and Hewitt had a couple of bruising matches at Roland Garros in 2001 and 2002 and they split them. In the first one Willy was leading 2 sets to 0 and had the match suspended at 2 sets all and then Hewitt came through and this was around the time he was ranked in the 80sand started making some big progress.


The 2002 match was very hard fought match these matches Hewitt was #1 in the world and the first 2 sets of this match were brutal, both were hitting the ball well and scrambling everything back and leaving nothing there on court. Hewitt won the first set TB easily 7-1 and then the big turning point was the 2nd set TB and whoever won that, was going to win the match and both players knew that and they were fighting like 2 rabid dogs with only one bone left and both were hitting to the corners of the court and jerking the other side to side. Cañas had the superior movement on the surface and Hewitt was at his strongest mentally then and neither was going to give in and saving set point after set point and then Willy took it 15-13 and then won the last 2 sets and that sums his up.

He can play on all surfaces and if he returns to form he will be a valuable asset for the Argentine Davis Cup team, as in my view he is the 2nd best all surface player in Argentina behind David Nalbandian, though if Coria returns to form that could be debated. Cañas loves the Davis Cup and would love to play again, but before that can happen, he has to battle through the Challenger events and it is fortunate that the Latin American section of the Challenger tour is active and that he can get some wildcards and be able to establish himself not far from home and away from the major epicentres of the tennis world.

If he is good enough to come through that and determined enough then he will able to make some noise on the main tour eventually, the question is now how well will he bounce back from this setback and he has been successful after having the wrist problems establishing himself, in theory the older he is, the harder it will be form to restablish himself in a sport that continues to evolve.