I'd like to offer a huge kuddos to our event winners this week - Jelena Ostapenko, Diana Shnaider and Alexander Bublik. All 3 of these winners were surprising in 1 shape or form.
I know, I know, nothing that Jelena Ostapenko does should ever be considered surprising, but hear me out. Jelena lost the Aussie Open doubles final and the expectation (almost a virtual certainty) was that she was either going to withdraw or be virtually catatonic upon arrival and lose her first match of the week. Sure enough she was down a set and 4-1 in her first match against Tauson. It took a minor miracle, but she somehow managed to make it past Tauson in a 3rd set tiebreak. From that point forward, Jelena was flat out dominant as she easily defeated Burrage, Pavlyuchenkova and Alexandrova. This victory is her 2nd title of the season, and 7th of her career. It should be real interesting to see how she does in the upcoming b2b Masters 1000's in Doha and Qatar.
Diana Shnaider on the other hand was a heavy underdog in every match that she played (minus 1) on her way to her first WTA Tour level title of her career. Diana showed some serious promise last year as she finished the season ranked 60th, but hadn't won a single match all season before she entered Thailand. As a result, her ranking had dropped nearly 50 spots. On her way to the title, Diana beat some quality opposition - Magda Linette, Paula Badosa, Dalma Galfi, Xinyu Wang and the defending Champion Lin Zhu. It will be very interesting to see how she fares the rest of the season - sadly I have no idea when she'll get to play next.
Then we have Alexander Bublik, or as many of us call him, Bubbles. I never know what to expect from him, then again, I'm dead certain that I'm not the only one. Hell I don't know, if he even knows what to expect from himself when he steps on the court. The question about him is never about his talent, but instead, what will his effort, motivation and quality will look like on court. No one would ever bring up his name when having a conversation about someone being mentally tough, but he did something that NO ONE has ever done - won an event and do so by losing the First Set in every match! That takes some serious mental strength, soo maybe just maybe, he's turned the corner? On his way to the title he beat Shapovalov (Denis should have beat him in straights to be honest), Shevchenko, Auger Aliassime and Coric. Its his 4th title of his career, and if he plays like he did in sets 2 and 3 this week for the rest of the season, he could do some big things this year.
Now in terms of FTL, GameWeek 2 is always a bit complicated as managers are doing everything in their power to not only collect points, but also increase their salary cap in the meantime. For those managers that were primarily focused on their salary cap, they paid for it dearly this week. Of the 6 finalists, the only player that's value wasn't dropping at least 0.5mill, was Jelena Ostapenko. With that being said, Jelena would have been incredibly difficult to trade in this week given the assumption towards her withdrawal. Meanwhile, those managers that focused primarily on points, did incredibly well, as 5 of the 6 finalists were top 4 seeded players in their respective events.
Most Gameweeks tend to be decided by a single match, and sometimes by a single set, but as we entered the SemiFinals, it appeared that the 2nd GameWeek was basically done and dusted. As we entered the Semi's, not only did Preston (Machiavekic) have the lead, but he also had 6 players left. The only real question was just how much was he going to win by. BUT by the time the dust settled, and Bublik won the final match of the week, Preston finished 3rd!
A huge congrats is given to Asier ( Euskal Herria🐉) for winning the week by 4.02 points as he amassed an incredible 392.67 points. He had Bublik as his Captain, and Ostapenko as a Team Player. He also had 2 other finalists as Team Players (Alexandrova and Lin Zhu)
Aditya (DesiAces) was 4 points back and finished in 2nd, and Nikhil (nbladeweilder) was 6.38 points back and finished in 4th.
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