When Felix Auger-Aliassime stepped onto the Aviva Centre's centre court against Lucas Pouille at the Rogers Cup last Tuesday, the Montreal native fulfilled a dream of playing in a Canadian Open main draw.
It was a milestone the 18-year-old won't forget anytime soon, but it's a goal that the ambitious young man has now accomplished. Next up on Auger-Aliassime's Canadian tennis checklist is to play in a Davis Cup final match on home soil.
Or it was, rather.
In light of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) deciding to overhaul the format of its Davis Cup final, the odds of a Canadian Davis Cup squad playing in the season-ending event at home has become greatly diminished, almost to the point of impossibility.
Seeing the writing on the wall, Auger-Aliassime took to Twitter Thursday night to express his frustration with the ITF's decision and the sadness he feels of a dream he may never get the chance to fulfill.
I still hoped tradition and history would win over money, but I guess that's where we are now..The gripe that Auger-Aliassime seems to have with the new Davis Cup final format stems from the fact the event will now take place at a pre-determined neutral site, like the FIFA World Cup, instead of the traditional home-and-away format that will guarantee that at least one of the competing nations will get a chance to play in front of their home fans.
The first championship in this new series will take place in either Madrid or Lille, France from Nov. 18-24, 2019, the ITF has said.
And though the season finale will be at a neutral site, qualifying will still take place in the traditional format.
ITF president Dave Haggerty told the Associated Press that this compromise between old and new "gives us the combination of history and tradition that we maintain as well as innovation with the finals."
But that's not how Auger-Aliassime sees it. Nor some of his peers, including Pouille, who's France club won the 2017 Davis Cup in front of their home crowd.
Let's enjoy our last davis cup year and lets try to keep it home.. 
A common criticism against this new format, one that hopes to attract elite players who commonly skip Davis Cup matches because of a grueling nearly 12-month schedule, is that it still won't entice the world's very-best to play because of how much tennis will need to be played in such a condensed amount of time in order to finish the event — one that takes place near the end of the year.
Regardless of this, the Davis Cup format's change is coming into effect, leaving Auger-Aliassime and other players like him, feeling left out in the cold by the ITF's decision.
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