Frank Dancevic hopes the surgery he had on a herniated disc in his back on Tuesday in Toronto will help get his career back on track.
Currently the top Canadian with an ATP ranking of No. 143, Dancevic says he has been bothered by the back problem for "a couple of years." It really flared up in during the second set of a straight-sets loss to Steve Darcis of Belgium in the first round of Wimbledon in June.
His last event was the qualifying for the U.S. Open at the end of August.
He will be unable to play tennis for another eight weeks and is aiming to get back on the tour by either the Indian Wells or Miami Masters 100 events in March.
"I'm going to do a lot of rehab, a lot of strengthening and try to get that area strong," he said. "Because, now that I've had surgery on that one disc, my other ones are going to be put under a lot more pressure."
Dancevic, 25, will be eligible for an injury-protected ranking when he returns. That works on the basis of him being out of the game for six months and is calculated using the average of his ranking over the first three months of his inactivity. He figures his protected ranking will be about No. 125, which unfortunately is about 20 points below what is needed for direct entry into Grand Slam events.
At the moment, the 367 points that make up his ranking are based predominantly on two results - the 162 points he earned for reaching the final of the Eastbourne grass-court tournament before Wimbledon last June, and the 90 points he received for making the semi-finals of the now-defunct Indianapolis event on hard courts in July.
He has the opportunity, with a possible return in March, to build up some points before having to 'defend' the bulk of his results coming from Eastbourne and Indianapolis.
Dancevic reached a career-high No. 65 in September 2007. He has one of the more skilful and all-round games on the tour and it would be nice if he were soon able to get back playing at his best level.
AD-IN
Tennis Canada announced on Wednesday that the top-10 women are entered in next summer's Rogers Cup tournament in Montreal. The Sydney (Australia) tour stop in January has been recently promoting itself as having nine of the top-10 players. Venus Williams, No. 6, is the only one absent.
While it is great for both events to have such stellar fields, there is a caveat. That is that three of the top five marquee names in the game (the Williams sisters are the exceptions) are currently not ranked in the top-10 - No. 14 Maria Sharapova, No. 18 Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin, who has no ranking.
There is still hope they could be in Montreal. A lack of tournaments is the main reason for them being outside the top-10. Sharapova, recovering from shoulder surgery, entered only 10 events in 2009, Clijsters just four, including her surprise win at the US Open, and Henin, about to come out of retirement, played none.
