WITH more than 65% of Miami’s population Hispanic, the paying tennis public of the city seemed to know something when it ensured that the Sony Ericsson Open men’s final was a 13,300 sell-out. Should Guillermo Canas cap the third arduous comeback of his career today by winning a tournament for which he was forced to qualify, the Latino celebration will be memorable.

However, few glasses will be raised in the Argentinian’s honour in the players’ lounge for a performer still widely viewed with scepticism. Even though Canas was acquitted after initially being forced out of tennis with a two-year ban when he tested positive for a banned substance in Mexico in 2005, the mood among his rivals is not one of forgiveness.

Canas’s achievement of scoring two victories over Roger Federer in the past month is universally admired. Nevertheless, clemency for any form of drug offender is not the done thing among top players. Even if Canas succeeds where Andy Murray failed emphatically and overcomes Novak Djokovic, only his fellow South Americans are likely to toast the success.

Djokovic may embody the future of the game. His 6-1 6-0 semi-final destruction of Murray suggests it is he rather than the Scotsman who is the most gifted teenager in the sport. A year ago there was much conjecture that the pair could ultimately become Davis Cup teammates under the British flag after Djokovic’s parents sought an audience with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) as Britain lost to Serbia in Glasgow. Now, according to an LTA spokesman, the matter has “fizzled out”.

Since then Djokovic has beaten Murray in all three of their ATP confrontations, reaching the final of the past two Masters Series events and establishing himself as a top10 player. Nevertheless, Canas is currently the player credited with the greatest accomplishment. Only Rafael Nadal in recent years has scored victories over Federer in successive tournaments entered and those wins were achieved on the clay of Rome and Roland Garros. Canas accomplished the feat on hard court, a surface on which Federer had registered 41 consecutive victories and amassed seven trophies before arriving in Indian Wells nearly a month ago.

Yet it has not always been party time for the 29-year-old. When he walks on court under the midday Florida sun he will doubtless cast his mind back to 15 frustrating months of suspension after being tested positive for using hydrochlorothiazide and the ignominy of being forcibly turned away from the gate of the US Open in 2005 — not to compete but merely to support his then girlfriend, Maria-Emilia Salerni, in her attempt to qualify.

Argentine drug offences have been commonplace in tennis during the past decade. Mariano Puerta, with whom Canas waged a colossal battle five-set battle in the quarter-final of the 2005 French Open, was handed the longest ban in tennis history of eight years after testing positive for a second time. The suspension was reduced to two years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in July last year. Guillermo Coria, Juan Ignacio Chela and Mariano Hood have also been found guilty. All protested their innocence; Hood’s plea in mitigation was that he had been using finas-teride for nine years to prevent hair loss.

Canas maintained that a sore throat caused him to ask the tournament doctor in Acapulco for medication. After being banned for two years in August 2005 and being ordered to return $276,060 in prize money, he appealed tirelessly. In May he was cleared.

Canas engendered tremendous respect by twice battling back after career-threatening surgery in each wrist. In 2001 he won the ATP’s Comeback Player of the Year award after revitalising his world ranking from 227 to 15.

When he returned to competition in September he was listed the world’s 514th-ranked player; now he is set to return to the world’s top 20, but his elation does not dispel painful memories. “I was not allowed go to any tennis stadium,” he recalled. “I was not even to enter the Vilas club in Buenos Aires, where I have played since I was 10. I paid a very, very big sanction for something which I do not consider an error. I trusted a doctor of the ATP. It is certain that I did not check the medicine, but that is the way the tournaments are handled. It was a great pain, and there was an enormous fight to find the truth.”