Massive congratulations goes out to both of our winners at Indian Wells this week - Iga Swiatek and Carlos Alcaraz. Both of them were nothing short of mesmerizing this week.
When you watch Iga Swiatek play, you are left to wonder, was she built to play on the dirt or on the hard courts of Indian Wells?!?!? She's now won 16 of her last 17 matches at Indian Wells, as she's won the event 2 of the past 3 years. There were legitimate questions for her coming into the event, as she played a truly horrible match in the Semi Finals of Dubai as she spewed error after error after error in a 3-set loss to Anna Kalinskaya and then when the draw came out, she was looking at the same set of matches (Danielle Collins and Linda Noskova) that she faced to start the season at the Aussie Open that sent her home early as well. The surface in Indian Wells is completely different to the Aussie Open tho, and Iga made quick work of both Danielle and Linda. By the time the dust settled, Iga reminded everyone just how dominant she can be as she won every match this in dominant fashion. Its hard to believe, but she lost a TOTAL of 3 games this week in the second set!!!! She played 6 matches and I will say this again, she lost a total of 3 games in those second sets. I am not going to pretend that she played the who's who on her way to the title, but its impossible not to take notice of how dominant she was in her matches against Danielle Collins, Linda Noskova, Yulia Putintseva, Caroline Wozniacki, Marta Kostyuk and Maria Sakkari. The only question is, could she do so against the likes of Rybakina, Sabalenka, Gauff and Pegula. She's only had to face one of them this season, and Rybakina was ill in their matchup. Maybe we'll get an answer to that question this coming week in Miami! Just a heads up, she won the Sunshine Double in 2022, could she do it again?
There are a few other things that I'd like to mention in terms of the womens event this week. Maria Sakkari has always loved it in Indian Wells, but she had been horrendous this season, as she'd had more losses (4) than wins (2) - It was soo bad that she fired her coach. She won 4 three set matches this week as she made the finals in Indian Wells for the 2nd time. She beat Diana Shnaider, Carolina Garcia, Diane Parry, Emma Navarro and Coco Gauff before she ran into the buzzsaw that was Swiatek in the final lol. Here's hoping that this result, will be a great omen of things to come. I'd really like to give Emma Navarro some much deserved love as well. Many of us thought that her ranking this season was over-inflated due to some late season vulturing of some small events, but if you watch her play against some top level opponents, your eyes will tell you something different. With this weeks result, she's now ranked inside the top 20, and as Aryna Sabalenka said, it would be easy to see her be ranked inside the top 10 this season. She may have lost in the semi's to Maria, but on her way to getting there, she beat both Aryna and Elina Svitolina in 2 incredible matches. Now on the other side of the coin are 2 Americans - Jessica Pegula and Coco Gauff. Jessica was injured to start the season, and just doesnt look right out there. She's lost early in back to back events, but Miami is a place that should suit her game, maybe her season could turn around there. Coco Gauff continues to win matches, but she's been an incredibly difficult watch. Her serve and her forehand were missing for almost the entire season, yet she's still made the Semi's of both the AO and Indian Wells. The draw gods have been very generous to her this season, but when you are playing this poorly, its hard to imagine continuing to have these types of positive results - She hit a mind boggling 17 double faults against Yue Yuan in a straight set win!??!!? Honestly, her forehand might be the worst ground stroke on either tour for anyone thats ranked inside the top 100.
There was nothing but questions surrounding Carlos Alcaraz as the event started. Even he had questions regarding how his ankle was going to hold up (He sprained his ankle in Rio just a couple of weeks ago). Hell, from all accounts, he didn't look right in most of his practice sessions before the start of Indian Wells, and didn't look right in his exho against Rafa (to be fair, its hard to read too much into an exho). Then the draws came out, and it was going to take something amazing for him to defend his title. Sure enough he came out rather sloppy in his first match against Matteo Arnaldi and lost the first set in a tiebreak, and you could hear nothing but chaos from TT talking about that he wasn't out there trying to win matches, that he was just out there to try to entertain. That he needs to stop trying to hit a winner on damn near every point, and just start playing tennis to win! Well, apparently he got the memo, because from that point forward, Alcaraz was borderline unplayable!! He absolutely massacred Matteo for the remainder of the match losing a total of 1 game, and then beat 3 players (Felix Auger Aliassime, Fabian Marozsan, and Alexander Zverev) that have given him all sorts of trouble in the past in incredibly dominant fashion - barely losing points on his serve in the process. Next was a matchup with Jannik Sinner in the Semi's - I'll be honest, its my fave matchup on either tour right now. Jannik hadn't lost a single match all season, and when he went into god mode in the first set and quickly raced out to a 6-1 first set, ya had to think that Alcaraz's title defense was going to go up in smoke. Jannik, played a poor service game early in the 2nd set, and the momentum changed on a dime. Alcaraz found some confidence and the next thing you knew, Jannik struggled to win points, forget games. Alcaraz won the final 2 sets 6-3,6-2. The 3rd set is something that Jannik and many of us will want to forget as he couldnt find the court on simple rally balls, and hit nearly 20 unforced errors. The final against Medvedev wasn't quite as one sided as the last time they played in Indian Wells, but it wasn't much better. Medvedev ran out to win the first 3 games of the match, but from that point forward, it was all Alcaraz. Their matchup for Daniil is a real ugly one to be honest, as if Carlos plays well, he has no chance. There are alot of pundits that are going to have eat some major crow after this week - as he got his first win since Wimbledon. There was some crazy highlights from Carlos this week (his athleticism is truly ridiculous), but at the same time, you didnt see him just give away point after point after point with a tonne of bad errors.
In terms of FTL, its a reminder to anyone thats having a tough start to their season, that in a blink of an eye, everything can change. Our website genius, Jeremy (Kalininasaurus Rex 🦖) was in the midst of one of those seasons where it didnt matter what he did, players either withdrew or lost early. Sadly, the frustrating results continued to mount day after day and week after week, then comes this week, the Indian Wells GameWeek and everything changes. Jeremy moved up 77 spots this week and picked up 220 points on our leader!!!
Jeremy's team accumulated a ridiculous 794.27 points for the week. He had both winners selected as Key Players, a finalist (Maria Sakkari) selected as a Dark Horse and had his Captain (Sinner), his other KP (Gauff) and a Team Player (Kostyuk) make the Semi's. As crazy as it sounds, the pick that might have won him the GW might have been his ATP Dark Horse - Gael Monfils!
Wayne (Court and Spark) was the only manager that was able to stay within 60 points of Jeremy! Jeremy's team was incredible, but Wayne had a legitimate chance to win the week going into the Mens Final. Wayne was the only manager that had all 4 finalists this week, and if Daniil gets it done in dominant fashion, he might have come thru with his 2nd victory of the season. Wayne was 26 points behind our winner.
Its hard to give 2 much love to anyone outside of our top 2 managers, but Voltan (TC Choker), Alex (Patchouly) and Asen (Referee) rounded out our top 5.
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