Auger-Aliassime vs Droguet — the home favourite's overdue reckoning with his own tournament

Preview · Montreal (ATP Masters 1000) · Round of 64 · Wednesday 5 August 2026

Felix Auger-Aliassime has never come into this event under quite this weight of expectation. He is the world No. 4, a career high, and the second seed, and no Canadian man has entered the Canadian Masters as a top-two seed in the Open era. He is also a Montreal native who turns 26 in three days' time and has not won a match at his home tournament since reaching the quarter-finals here in 2022. Standing in the way is Titouan Droguet, a French qualifier ranked No. 119 whose career high is No. 114, and who has nothing to lose. That combination — a home player carrying a personal drought and an opponent playing free — is exactly the kind of opener that has gone wrong for Auger-Aliassime before.

The matchup

There is no established head-to-head to lean on, and the two are separated by more than a hundred ranking places, so the shape of the match will be dictated by whether Droguet can hold serve often enough to stay in touch. Auger-Aliassime's game travels well in these conditions: a heavy first serve, a forehand he can hit through the court and, this year, a noticeably better sense of when to shorten a point. Droguet earned his place with a nervy three-set win over his compatriot Luca Van Assche, 6-4, 2-6, 7-6(7), a scoreline that says something useful about him. He saved the match he was in the process of losing, which is more than many qualifiers manage, but it also confirms he is a grinder rather than a shot-maker, and grinding is a slow way to hurt a top-five server.

Form & hard courts

Auger-Aliassime is 30-14 for the season and reached the quarter-finals at both Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, one of only three men to manage that this year alongside Alexander Zverev and Flavio Cobolli. His Wimbledon exit, a five-set defeat by Novak Djokovic lasting more than five hours, was the sort of loss that tends to be read as progress. The complication is off-court: he parted with his coach of ten years, Frederic Fontang, after Wimbledon, is working with his father in the interim and does not intend to appoint a successor until after the US Open. Set against last year's second-round exit in Toronto, that is a slightly unsettled backdrop for a favourite.

The deciding factor

The first four service games. Auger-Aliassime's difficulties at this tournament have rarely been about ability and almost always about the opening hour, when a home crowd's hope becomes pressure and a returner with nothing to lose gets a look at a tight second serve. If the Canadian holds comfortably early, Droguet has no path; his best ball is not heavy enough to trouble a top-five player from the baseline. If the first set drifts to a tie-break, the noise starts working against the favourite rather than for him.

The call

Auger-Aliassime to win, with medium-high confidence. The gulf in quality is large enough that only nerves can complicate it, and his own history here means nerves cannot be dismissed entirely, so a dropped set is a real possibility rather than a remote one.