Game Week 25 Results - Winston Salem and Cleveland

 

The final game week before the US Open predictably saw a barrage of withdrawals and left most of us struggling to field anything resembling a team!  But if you chose your trades wisely it was still possible to pick up some decent points this week.  

There were strong performances this week from some of the popular picks like Alexandrova, Lehecka and Coric but we had two fairly surprising faces holding the trophies at the end of the week.   

Sebastian Baez had only 13 owners including the eventual game week winner and also Leander who had him as Captain!  So I don't think many of us expected him to actually win the title in Winston Salem.  He defeated Coric in the semi final and Lehecka in the final to win his 3rd trophy of the season and perhaps remarkably his first hard court title.  Going into this event his record on hard courts was 1 win and 6 defeats this season.  Its now 6 and 6 and this win takes him up to 32 in the live rankings.

We had an even more surprising winner in Cleveland. Sara Sorribes Tormo actually lost in qualifying to Clara Burel but with the flood of withdrawals she was able to get a lucky loser spot and boy did she take advantage of it defeating Siniakova, Kudermetova, Maria and Stephens in straight sets before going the distance to beat Ekatarina Alexandrova in the final.

In the 50 years of WTA tennis from January 1973 to June 2023, only three lucky losers had gone on to win a WTA Title  - McDaniel (Atlanta 1980), Danilovic (Moscow 2018)  and Gauff (Linz 2019).  We have now had a further 3 in the last two months!  Timofeeva (Budapest 2023), Hibino (Prague 2023) and now Tormo!

Here is the final game week leaderboard.

It was a thrilling climax to the game week with Season leader Muhammad Aoun Abbas seemingly in a strong position going into the semi finals and Aditya Sharma dependant on Baez going all the way to have any chance of overhauling Muhammad.

But Baez delivered and Aditya came out on top and its safe to say he is delighted with his first game week win of the season comparing this achievement to recent Indian achievements in athletics and lunar exploration!  

Here is Aditya's winning team

As well as Baez,  Aditya had Cleveland finalist Alexandrova as well as semi finalists Lin Zhu and Borna Coric.   

A hearty FTL congratulations to Aditya and Muhammad can take solace from the fact that he has pulled away a little at the top of the overall leaderboard.