Congrats to our winners - Hubert Hurkacz, Jessica Pegula, Leylah Fernandez, and Qinwen Zheng.
Hubert's victory in Shanghai was his 2nd event win of the season (Marseille). Coming into the week, Hurkacz had been having a very tough season as his ranking had fallen to 17th. His level of play rarely seemed to be the issue, but he continued to lose big matches as he struggled to win tiebreaks. In fact, he should have beaten Alcaraz in both Canada and Cincinnati earlier this year, but again, he lost 3 tiebreaks to Carlos. Coming into the week, he had played approximately 50 tiebreaks this season, but his record in them was at 500 - considering his serve, its hard to fathom. With all that being said, Hubert turned it around this week and was 4 and 0 in tiebreaks, including winning 2 matches in a 3rd set winner-take-all tiebreak against both hometown favourite, Zhizhen Zhang, and in the final against Andrey Rublev.
Jessica Pegula's victory in Seoul was her 2nd event win (Montreal) of the season as well. Jessica's road to victory was rather routine as she didn't have to play a single player ranked inside the top 75, but she still managed to lose a set to Claire Liu. This victory may come across as meaningless to most people, but it was really important to Jessica as her mother grew up in Seoul, and was a home-coming of sorts.
Leylah Fernandez's victory in Hong Kong was her first event win of the season and 3rd of her career. Leylah's struggled mightily with expectations and injuries since her run to the US Open final just a couple of years ago, and this was her first final since Monterrey in 2022. As a result of her struggles, her ranking has dropped mightily over the past couple of years and her ranking had dropped outside the top 70 earlier this year. It can turn into a vicious cycle as once your ranking drops, the draw gods can get real nasty and you end up facing top top players in R1 or R2 of every event that you enter. On her way to the title, she beat Victoria Azarenka, Mirra Andreeva, Linda Fruhvirtova, Anna Blinkova and Katarina Siniakova. She'll gain a tonne of confidence from the event, not only because she won it, but because she avenged alot of losses from earlier this year.
NOW onto the real story of the week - QINWEN ZHENG!. A couple of weeks ago, Qinwen won the Asian Games, and during her interview, she dropped a bombshell where she informed the media that her coach, Wim Fissette, had dropped her as a client and was going back to Naomi Osaka. You could see the pain, frustration and anger from Qinwen, as she felt betrayed by someone she trusted and felt abandoned. The only question surrounding Qinwen over the past few years was when she was going to breakthrough, not if, so for a coach to walk away from a player this talented is hard to imagine. I know Naomi has won 4 slams over the years, but her lack of intensity and intention over the past few years makes this really questionable. Anyways, days after winning the Asian Games, Qinwen didn't look like she was ready to be on court and got thrashed by the incredibly talented Elena Rybakina. Then when the draw came out in Zhengzhou, it looked like the draw gods did her no favours as she was looking at facing an in-form top player in R2 (Maria Sakkari). By the time the dust settled, she beat 4 top 30 players (Maria Sakkari, Anhelina Kalinin, Jasmine Paolini and Barbora Krejcikova) and won the event in her home country. This was her 2nd victory of her career and 2nd of the season (Palermo). As far as I'm concerned, the sky is the limit when it comes to Qinwen.
Game Week 31 was incredibly awkward for everyone involved, as Game Week 31 overlapped Game Weeks 29 and 30. Most managers didn't have an issue with fielding a team for the week, but they had to decide who was actually going to play in the WTA events in Zhengzhou, Seoul and Hong Kong. Almost an impossible task considering most of the top players were still playing in Shanghai. Sadly, by the time a ball had been played in Zhengzhou, 4 top players (Gauff, Rybakina, Vondrousova, Muchova) had withdrawn. After all of the withdrawals, the draw in Zhengzhou looked completely unrecognizable.
All of those late withdrawals showed the uptmost importance of Emergency Replacement ORDER AND SELECTION in FTL for most managers. By the time the dust settled, there were 4 managers that finished within 15 points of our GW Victor (Peanutbutter-Picklejuice Power by Kei TO).
Kei To amassed 483.11 points this week. He was one of the few managers that had 2 event winners this week (Pegula and Hurkacz). He also had Rublev make the final as well. He was far from flawless tho, as he had 3 players lose in R1 (Sakkari, Zverev and Lehecka)
Faris (Henman United) finished 2nd just 4.5 points behind. If Hurkacz loses either final set tiebreaks to Zhizhen or Rublev, Faris ends up coming out on top. Tough loss considering Rublev was up 5-2 in the 3rd set breaker.
Hard to imagine but Christie (Controlled Aggression) missed the lockout and finished 4th this week just 10 points out of first. I know I know, stranger things have happened right? ya, of course, but she hasn't changed her lineup since Madrid, and do not forget that the Dark Horse Category comes into play this week lol. Needless to say, it wouldn't have taken much for her to win this week, and then lets be honest, we all should have been ashamed!!
