Game Week 23 (Canadian Open) Results

     

Popyrin and Pegula hit purple patch to land Canadian Open titles!

Its crazy that we've had 6 Masters 1000 events this year in the ATP and 6 different winners.  In fact, Montreal runner up Andrey Rublev is the only player to have featured in two of those finals.

But there is no doubt, that the most surprising of all of those winners was Alexei Popyrin.  Alexei has always been a decent player but he has definitely upped his level in these last 2 years which has seen him really push up the rankings. He beat five quality players to reach the final  (Machac, Shelton, Dimitrov, Hurkacz and Korda) and his performance against Rublev in the final was exceptional.

On the WTA side, it was a cracking week for American tennis in Toronto with five US players reaching the quarter finals (Pegula, Stearns, Navarro, Townsend and Anisimova).  Ultimately it was two players with a point to prove who reached the final.  

Jess Pegula had a difficult start to the season with injury and was desperately in need a big tournament win to resurrect her hopes of getting to the year end tour finals. Retaining her Canadian Open title has given her a huge boost and she has to be considered one of the contenders at the upcoming US Open. 

And its great to see Amanda Anisimova competing at the top level again after all she's been through with her personal life and injury.  She is absolutely a threat to any player when she is playing at her best as evidenced by the way she took down Aryna Sabalenka in the quarter finals.

Jessica and Amanda served up an entertaining final but ultimately it was Pegula who prevailed in 3 sets.

Here is the FTL Table for the game week

Congrats to Muhammad and Anton on a terrific game week.  It ended up a pretty close battle between the two of them.  Muhammad finished top of the Global League with his tally, while Anton wins the game week prize for level 2 members.  Christie, Michael and Greg make up the top 5.

Lets take a look at the head to head between the top 2 teams.

Fedex Superstars had an almost perfect Toronto line-up with both finalists Pegula and Anisimova and a semi finalist in Emma Navarro. Having Pegula as a KP also gave Muhammad some valuable extra points which ultimately made the difference.

A.P.G. also had Pegula and Montreal runner up Rublev as a dark horse.  Anton also made an excellent adventurous pick with Diana Shnaider who is having quite the year.