May monthly standings

Here are the final monthly standings for May.

Congratulations to Billy who went into the French Open in a strong position after a 4th place finish in Game Week 13 and a 2nd place finish in Game Week 14.  His performance at RG was enough to get him over the line.

Congrats also to Samir, Asen, Luke, Vlad, Nikhil and Oli on a great month!

The table shows the top 7 with their points and position in each of the three game weeks.

Game Week 16 draws

 

ATP Hertogenbosch

ATP Stuttgart

WTA Hertogenbosch

WTA Nottingham

Overall Leaderboard after the French Open

 Here is the overall leaderboard after the French Open

We seem to have had the same three teams jostling for the top spot for some time now and in this game week it was Robyn who took the initiative as her 4th place game week finish allowed her to steal a march on her rivals Muhammad who finished 60th in the game week and Tricia who finished in 46 th.

The chasing pack still have them in their sights however with Silvi rising 2 places to lead the peleton in 4th.  Marc Sab and the champs move up 3 places into 5th position and Samir is up 7 places to 6th position after an excellent game week in which he finished 3rd. 

Dutch Dynamite and Metty's Marvels tumbled out the top 10 after a French Open both would like to forget. 

Luke Angus moved up 19 places to 54th after his game week win.

French Open - Final Leaderboard

There were a number of questions facing FTL Managers going into this year's French Open.

Djokovic's form during the clay swing had been patchy with questions marks over his fitness.  Would he peak, as he so often does, at the important moment and clinch a historic 23rd Grand Slam final.  The answer was a resounding YES.  His biggest challenge came against young pretender Carlos Alcaraz when we seemed to be on the verge of a modern tennis classic at 1 set all before the young Spaniard's challenge was derailed by cramp.

Would Iga Swiatek be able to defend her title having herself had an injury scare in Rome and would she be able to fend off the challenge of her main rivals this season, Rybakina and Sabalenka?  The answer again was YES. Rybakina's withdrawal and Sabalenka's defeat to Karolina Muchova meant that it was actually the uber-talented Czech who provided the opposition for the reigning champ in the final with Iga just managing to hold off Karolina's comeback in a tense 3 setter.

And how about Medvedev who made a mockery of his supposed claycourt aversion by winning the Rome title! Well Daniil was about to make a mockery of everyone who picked him as he was a 1st Round exit at the hands of Brazilian Thiago Seyboth Wild.

And what of last years runner up, Casper Ruud who quite frankly had frustrated his many owners with some less than impressive results this year and was left on the bench or traded out of many teams. Those who stayed faithful to Casper the Friendly Ghost were to rewarded handsomely as he repeated his run to the RG final beating scandanavian foe Holger Rune and a resurgent Sascha Zverev with remarkable ease. Unfortunately he didn't have enough to challenge Novak in the final despite a strong opening set. 

Many FTL managers got these important calls correct and made decent dark horse picks to score highly in this game week. The top 7 teams in the game week were separated by just 25 points.

Here is the final French Open leaderboard. 

Congratulations to Luke Angus and his Australian Army for clinching one of the most coveted prizes in the FTL Calendar - the French Open title.

Here is Luke's winning team

Luke had both champions and runner up Casper Ruud as well as semi finalists Sabalenka and Alcaraz.  He could have scored higher had he gone with his ER1 Sascha Zverev rather than Garcia or Coric. Luke had excellent dark horse picks in Sebastian Ofner and Sloane Stephens who both reached the 4th Round. 

Cleeve took 2nd place finishing just over 13 points behind. Rybakina's withdrawal proved to be costly for his slam aspirations but he also had solid dark horse picks in Jarry and Cocciaretto who scored that impressive 1st Round win over Kvitova.

Samir takes 3rd place just 16 points behind but like many of us was the victim of Medvedev's surprise 1st Round exit when ERs Fritz and Cerundolo would have given him the game week had he chose them ahead of Daniil.

And just 1 point further back was Robyn who moved to the top of the overall leaderboard with another excellent game week. In Robyn's case it was Jess Pegula who let the side down with her surprise 3rd Round loss to Elise Mertens.