MONTECARLO RESULTS

 A massive congratulations goes out to our winner of MonteCarlo - Stefanos Tsitsipas. 

The discussion surrounding Tsitsipas has been rather tricky over the past couple of years - his talent is hard to miss, but its also impossible to miss his shortcomings.  Ever since he lost the French Open final (In May of 2021) from 2 sets to love up against Novak Djokovic, Stef has struggled to close the door in the final of top tier events - He's made the final of 6 such events (above a 250) and had only won once - YES that's in nearly 3 years!!!  

 

To make matters worse, Stef had been having an absolute horror story of a season, as his best result of the season was a SF in a small 250 level event in Los Cabos.  His level was sooo low (every time you turned around, he shanked a ball from the backhand wing) that there was legit questions as to if he was going to fall outside the top 20.  All of this being said, MonteCarlo is Stef's fave Masters1000 level event on tour as not only does he live there in the offseason, but he's also won it twice.  Needless to say, it put many a prognosticator in a quandry with what to expect from him for the week.   Stef put all those doubters in their place quickly as he quickly dispatched 2 clay court specialists - Djere and Etcheverry.  He then beat Zverev in an incredibly tricky match 7-5,7-6 to reach the Quarters, and easily beat Khachanov to reach the Semi's.  Sadly his victory over Sinner in the Semi's won't be remembered by most for his triumph but instead a horrific linecall (on a double fault) that would have put Sinner up 2 breaks in the 3rd, and an injury to Jannik when he was leading 4-2.  Facts are facts though, Stef became only the 2nd player to beat Jannik this season.  In the final against Casper, Stef won in rather routine fashion 6-1,6-4.  The match seemed closer than the score indicated, but Stef won every big point, as Casper wasn't able to convert a single break chance.  Now the question for Stef going forward is can he continue this incredible level that he found this week in MonteCarlo or is it simply a blip on the radar screen that we won't see again until next year in MonteCarlo!?!?

I'd like to also give a huge kuddos to Casper Ruud.  Yes, he played a rather poor match in the final against Stef, as he went 0 for 8 on break chances, but he did something in the SemiFinal that he's never done before! - beat a top 3 player.  He came into the match against Novak Djokovic having never won a single set against a top 3 player - 0 for 25!!!  Safe to say that his victory over Novak will probably do him more good confidence wise than his run to the final this week!

Outside of the 2 finalists, there are 4 major questions that came out of this week.  

1. Novak didn't look like he was in proper condition in order to play a Bo3 with Casper Ruud.  Could this be an issue moving forward on the dirt this year?!?!?

2. Andrey Rublev - is he ever going to look like a top 5 player again?!?!?  Since his default in Dubai, he's looked like a shell of himself 

3.  Just how serious is the knee injury to Jannik?  Could this create havoc with the rest of his clay court season?!?!

4. How serious is Alcaraz's injury to his right forearm?!?!  He's already been forced to withdraw from both MonteCarlo and Barcelona, sooo could it be soo severe that he misses the French Open?  How will it look if he tries to play with it in Madrid?

In terms of FTL, the managers success was decided by 2 things - Did you have the gutts to trade in Stefanos Tsitsipas on his fave event (everyone in the top 15 had him), and who was your Emergency Replacement to cover Carlos Alcaraz's late withdrawal?!

I'd like to offer a huge congrats to our MonteCarlo GameWeek Winner - The Commissioner (Value Picks 💰📈).    His team showed the importance of building salary value throughout the early stage of season, as he was able to have Novak Djokovic, Jannik Sinner and still be able to have a competitive roster behind it!!  As a result, he ended up with all 4 finalists.  The Commissioner accumulated an incredible 533.57 points this week - not bad considering there was only 1 event going on this week!  Its strange to say this, but he was able to win the week while having 2 players lose in R1 (Koepfer and his DH - Jarry)

Goran (Bridgeburners), Kevin G (SloanePlease), Derek G (DG - Djokovic the GOAT), and Niels (Russian Roulette) round out our top 5.  Everyone that finished inside the top 3 had all 4 finalists this week!