Two ATP and two WTA events in Game Week 28 and it was another week where most of us struggled to field anywhere near a full line-up.
Lots of great stories though and what better place to begin than with Marin Cilic winning the Hangzhou Open title. The big serving Croat has barely played at all over the last 2 years due to injury problems so it was quite surprising to see him the draw. Even more impressive was how he just hit the ground running, powering through to the final where he beat home favourite Zhang Zhizhen. Quite the return to action!
At the 2nd Thailand Open of this year, Rebecca Sramkova of Slovakia made her 2nd final in a row. Having surprisingly lost out to Sonay Kartal in Tunisia, it was a better outcome for Rebecca this time as she scored an impressive win over Laura Siegemund in the final in Hua Hin. And Rebecca did not stop there - she went straight from Thailand to Beijing to take part in qualies - won both her matches and has since won her 1st Round match as well. That's 12 wins in 13 matches folks.
There is a lot of buzz about Jerry Shang - a young kid with an exciting brand of tennis and indeed a few in our FTL chat group fancied him to do well at the event in Chengu. Shang Juncheng played a phenomenal final against Musetti despatching the Italian 7-6, 6-1 against all the odds.
And finally to the Korea Open in Seoul. Beatriz Haddad Maia has been on a decent run these last few months and has been a valuable points scorer for those that picked her up during the American hardcourt swing. However in the final against Kasatkina, the Brazilian appeared well beaten after Daria took the first set with comparative ease and quickly went a break up in the 2nd set. However BHM hung in there in the hope that her chance would come and eventually it did. She turned the 2nd set around and there was no looking back as she secured yet another title.
Here is the Global League FTL Table for Game Week 28
Congratulations to Dimitris Blanos (Serve the Servants) who is this weeks Game Week winner with an impressive total of 323.086 points. Andrea Lenox was just 5 point behind in 2nd place but as has happened a few times this season, Andrea can console herself with being the level 2 champ and winning the weekly prize.
Shout out to Kenneth Burrow (Bits and Pieces), Aron Roggen (Club Leopold), Asen Vatev (referee), Michael Schmardebeck (Ace) and Emi Kottasz (Carrotta Dreams) who all managed to clear 300 points in what was quite a tough week.
Lets take a look at the head to head between the two top teams.
Andrea managed to secure 2nd place with just half a team which is quite incredible! She had two winners in the shape of her Captain Beatriz Haddad Maia and KP Shang Juncheng, She also had Hangzhou runner up Zhang Zhizhen and a pretty decent return from Mannarino. Not bad at all for four players.
Dimitris had a bigger team of 6 players this week and even though Uchijima and Stephens were pretty much passengers, you could argue that the 5 points they contributed made all the difference this week. Other than that Dimitris also had 2 winners with Haddad Maia a KP and the quite excellent pick of Sramkova as a TP. Nakashima and Kostyuk also got decent points for this team.
Congrats to both Dimitris and Andrea on a great week!
Here is the overall standings after Game Week 28
(Elin is still clear at the top after an excellent September so far)
