Ladies and Gentlemen,
May I present to you our 2023 Wimbledon Champions
Novak Carlos Alcaraz and Marketa Vondrousova
The one thing that seemed guaranteed before Wimbledon commenced was that Djokovic would hold the trophy aloft at the end of the fortnight breaking several more records in the process. And Novak certainly looked the part throughout the event comfortably defeating Wawrinka, Hurkacz, Rublev and Sinner en route to the final, losing a total of 2 sets in the process.
But the young Spanish No 1 Carlos Alcaraz continues to amaze the tennis world. His title in Queens already suggested that he was starting to master the art of playing on grass and he proceeded to cruise through the draw in similar fashion to Novak defeating Jarry, Berrettini, Rune and Medvedev with remarkable ease.
So it was Carlos v Novak, No 1 v No 2, the young star against the veteran legend and the match did live up to all the expectations. It looked like the writing was on the wall when Novak won the 1st set 6-1 but Carlos hung in there to just edge the 2nd set tie break and pushed ahead to take the third. Like a true champ Novak regrouped to take the 4th but the young Spaniard refused to accept the familiar Wimbledon narrative and outplayed Novak in the 5th to secure the title with some outstanding tennis.
Meanwhile in the women's event, the destination of the title seemed to be completely up in the air. Would Iga Swiatek be able to adapt her game to find success on grass? Her main rivals didn't seem to be in great shape with Elena Rybakina struggling to recover from the virus which had floored her at the French and Aryna Sabalenka bombing out of the Berlin grass court event early.
In the end the three women dubbed the "big three" of the WTA tour progressed through to the Quarter Finals quite comfortably and it seemed now likely that one of them would win the title. But there were three other women who were to grab the headlines.
Elina Svitolina, only just back from giving birth to her first child, had a remarkable run through to the Quarter Finals and stunned everyone when she knocked out Iga Swiatek to reach the semi finals. Last years beaten finalist Ons Jabeur who had looked out of sorts on the grass prior to Wimbledon found that SW19 inspiration and started to believe once again, gaining her revenge against Rybakina in the Quarter Final and coming from behind to defeat Sabalenka in the semi final.
And last but not least there was the unheralded and unseeded Czech, Marketa Vondrousova who had quietly worked her way through the draw to reach the Quarter Finals where she produced a remarkable comeback to defeat Jessica Pegula. She then went on to comfortably defeat an out of sorts Svitolina in the semi final.
So was this to be the realisation of the dream for Ons Jabeur. She started the final well against Marketa and seemed on course to win the Championship but Vondrousova proved to be a tenacious opponent and as nerves set in Ons began to lose her grip on the match and her confidence dipped as she went down rather easily to her Czech opponent. Marketa was ultimately a very deserving champion!
Congratulations to Dragan Josifoski (Nadal's forehand) who is our Wimbledon FTL Champion. Here is the final FTL table at the end of the Championships.
Dragan picked what turned out to be an outstanding team for Wimbledon in an event where one or two choices were going to make a big difference. He had runner up Djokovic as Captain (as most of us did) and he had Champion Alcaraz as a KP (as most of us did). In fact 7 of this team were among the 9 most selected players for Wimbledon but the key selection was Ons Jabeur who for many was seen as a big gamble going into Wimbledon and only 27 people selected her but Dragan showed faith in her and that faith was rewarded handsomely as Ons powered her way to the final.
Here is Dragan's winning team. I'll gloss over DH's Murray and Samsonova as they didn't really contribute to Dragan's success!
Emi Kotasz (Wonders of Igaland) was another Ons owner and ran Dragan very close finishing just 8.898 points behind. The early loss of Tiafoe left her playing catch up for most of the fortnight but a good performance by DH Bublik kept her in the chase for the top spot until his loss to Rublev ended his run. (At least Bublik ended the Halle curse!)
Martin Poirieux (Martin Parpaing) was only 4 points further back. He had strong performances from his DHs Tommy Paul and Vika Azarenka but perhaps it was the loss of Tsitsipas to the Wimbledon surprise package Chris Eubanks which scuppered his chances.
And kudos must go to Nikhil Idnani(nbladeweilder) who actually had a full squad of 10 players going into the 2nd week of Wimbledon with Shapovalov and Azarenka as DHs. Unfortunately for Nikhil, his players then started to take out each other with Dimitrov losing to Rune and then Rune losing to Alcaraz and with no Ons on his team, his challenge for the game week started to fade. The upside is that a great game week has really bolstered his position in the overall league table.
Bhanu, Robyn, Mat, Dimitris, Frances and Florian make up the top 10.
Congratulations to all!
