Game Week 12 - Madrid - Weekly results

 

The cake sizes may have been different but the trophies were thankfully the same size.  Birthday buddies Aryna Sabalenka and Carlos Alcaraz are your Madrid Champions after 2 weeks of fantastic tennis in the Spanish capital.

Both Iga and Aryna had one minor hiccup en route the final,  Iga losing a set to Alexandrova in the Round of 16 and Aryna had to come from a set down against Mayar Sherif in the Quarters.  Ultimately though Aryna got her wish and had a chance for immediate revenge for the defeat in Stuttgart as the World no's 1 and 2 faced off in consecutive tournaments for the first time since Davenport and Hingis back in 2000.  It was a top quality final which had an interesting pattern after 3-3 in the 1st set of Aryna wining 3 games then Iga winning 3 games then Aryna winning 3 games until Aryna held her nerve to see off her foe with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 victory. This rivalry looks like being a great one for women's tennis.

One half of the mens draw went very much according to plan with local hero Carlos Alcaraz cruising to the final save for a minor scare against Ruusuvuori in his 2nd Round match. The other half of the draw provided the story of the week in the shape of veteran German Jan Lennard Struff.  After losing to Aslan Karatsev in qualifying, Struffy got a reprieve with a lucky loser spot and took full advantage. As more fancied names like Medvedev and Fritz fell by the wayside, we had an unlikely quarter final line-up of Struff against Tsitsipas and that man Karatsev against Chinese newcomer Zhang.  Struff defied the odds to see of Stefanos and then turned the tables on Karatsev in the semi final.  It was always going to be a tall order for JLS to overcome Alcaraz but he gave it a damn good shot and definitely had the young Spaniard rattled for a large part of the match but Carlos finally managed to prevail 6-3 in the deciding set.

FTL Results

Here is the winning team and final table for Game Week 12.

Massive congrats to Bibek for a quite astonishing game week. I remember nearly falling off my chair when I saw that Bibek still had a full squad going into the 2nd week of Madrid when I'd lost more than half my team! 

Like many he had both winners Alcaraz and Sabalenka and also runner up Swiatek. But he also had 3 quarter finalists in Greek pair Tsitsipas and Sakkari and DH Coric.  All of his other players managed at least 2 wins during the week.

All that added up to a resounding game week triumph with Bibek ending up almost a full 100 points ahead of the chasing pack.  In fact only Arnaud (742.947) points and Tosh (738.927 points) finished with 100 points of the leader.  Both of them can be delighted however with an excellent game week.