The Kingmaker

THE LEGENDARY FRENCH COACH LOUIS BORFIGA TRANSFORMED CANADA FROM A TENNIS BACKWATER INTO A WORLD-CLASS CONTENDER

DAVE ZARUM

AS A KID, Louis Borfiga used to hit balls at the Monte Carlo country club where his grandfather gardened. He wasn’t rich, but he had a passion for tennis. Little did he know that, in Canada, he would transform it. After enjoying a brief pro career—he was ranked 308th in the world in 1975—Borfiga oversaw the ascent of France’s national junior program, which developed the secondmost top-100 players of any nation. Then, in 2006, he arrived in Montreal, armed with a simple message: “Why not us?” In 15 years as Tennis Canada’s VP of high performance, the famously modest 66-year-old mastermind became the architect of a national program that has nurtured some of the country’s—and the world’s—brightest tennis stars: Andreescu, Raonic and Fernandez, all products of Borfiga’s system, are now…

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Maclean's (Digital) - 1 Issue, June 2022

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