Game Week 5 results

 

Another week of FTL and another week when most of us were left scratching our heads in disbelief as our carefully curated teams crashed and burned in spectacular fashion.   The remainder of this blog will try to piece together and attempt to explain what exactly happened as FTL Carnage struck again.

I know what you're saying - "Change the tune Jer - you go on about FTL carnage every single week" 

but... I mean..... look at the winners this week...

I mean look at them!!

ok, ok -  Karen was a decent shout to win Doha and Sebastian is always excellent on clay but if anyone had two or more of this quartet in their team then they should consider pursuing a career as a clairvoyant.  But lets try and make a bit of sense of it all.

We begin with the WTA 1000 event in Dubai.   

The Australian Open Champion Aryna Sabalenka returned to the fray and was promptly skittled out in the 1st Round by her nemesis -  Donna Vekic.  💣  (Those familiar with the H2H may have seen this coming)

Elena Rybakina's terrific run eventually caught up with her and she had to withdraw from her Quarter Final match against Jasmine Paolini  💣

But perhaps the chief havoc maker this week was Anna Kalinskaya who came through qualifying and went on to take out:

Jelena Ostapenko (at least we can stop talking about the Vika jinx now)  💣

&

US Open Champ  Coco Gauff in the Quarter Finals  💣 

&

World No 1 and French Open champ Iga Swiatek in the semi finals 💣 

Paolini had carried off a couple of upsets on her own en route to the final including a remarkable come back against Haddad Maia in Round 1 and she needed those fighting skills again in the final against Kalinskaya where she was a set down and a break down in the both sets 2 and 3. 

Both Jasmine and Anna have shot up the rankings after their efforts this week and its very well deserved.  It will be interesting to see what these two can achieve this year.

The South American swing continued to surprise us.  Last year Cam Norrie and Carlos Alcaraz dominated the swing, contesting both the finals in Buenos Aires and Rio and seemed a safe pick for FTLers who could afford them both. After surprise defeats in Argentina we expected both to bounce back but injury  struck Carlos 💣 after only a few points of his opening match in Rio and illness got the better of Cam Norrie 💣 as he went down rather meekly to surprise package Mariano Navone.

Navone was no match for Baez in the final however as Sebastian secured his 5th ATP title and his first at 500 level.

The story of the week in Doha was 18 years old Jakub Mensik who apparently only took up the offer to play at the event on the promise of a free I-Pad!  But he took the opportunity to show everyone why there is so much hype around him by taking out veterans Murray and Monfils and also tournament favourite Andy Rublev 💣 in some style.

Khachanov always looked a good bet to come through his half of the draw and he finally managed to tame the young Czech but it took an epic first set tie break to finally break his resistance. A pretty decent week for Karen who went through the event without dropping a set.

And finally to Los Cabos where the big names in attendance seemed to be bucking the trend of carnage happening elsewhere in the tennis world.  Tsitsipas, Ruud and Zverev all started their week with dominant performances and ultimately managed to progress to the semi finals without too much problem.

But the other semi finalist had other ideas....

Jordan Thompson is playing some of the best tennis of his career at the moment but had looked down and out against the American Alex Michelsen but somehow he survived and boy did he take advantage of this reprieve,  Jordan not only took out Alexander Zverev  in the semi finals💣 but then went to win the final in straight sets against Casper Ruud 💣 

Congrats to Jordan - 1st career title at the age of 29 and he did it in some style.

It seems that some of you FTLers do know your stuff because:

Jordan Thompson had 21 owners (with 4 at KP)

Karen Khachanov had 23 owners

Sebastian Baez had 45 owners

Anna Kalinskaya had 26 owners (13 at DH)

but Jasmine Paolini just had 2 owners (kudos to the 2 who had her!)

So, over to the game week winners and in a way we had three winners this week.

The level 2 weekly prize winner is Bhanu  (Austin 3:16)  .  Bhanu had 2 champions in Khachanov and Baez as well as Dubai runner up Anna Kalinskaya and he amassed an impressive total of 417.18 points. Congrats Bhanu!

The level 1 winner is Olya Tolstova who had champions Sebastian Baez and Jordan Thompson in her team and also accrued decent points from KPs Zverev, Swiatek and Gauff as well as TP Pliskova and finished the game week with a total 431.46 points. Congrats Olya!

But does all the game week glory go to Bhanu and Olya?

"No I say!"

"That's not fair?"  I hear you say!     

"It is fair" I say - "in fact it's Christopher Fare!!!"  (yes the whole blog was building up to this gag!) 

Massive congrats to our Global League Player Christopher and his team "The Consistents" who absolutely romped the game week,  

Here are the final Global Standings

Christopher had the 3 champions Khachanov, Thompson and Baez as his KPs and Dubai runner up Kalinskaya as his DH.  That's what you call an outstanding week. His total was a ridiculous 522.57 points.

For sake of comparison, here is the H2H match up between Christopher and his nearest challenger Olya!

Give us a follow on Facebook and/or twitter if you read this Christopher!  Well done!