A huge congratulations goes to the winners of the Rome Masters 1000 - Jasmine Paolini and Carlos Alcaraz.
To say that Jasmine Paolini's victory in her home event was well received is the understatement of the world!! It was truly a raucous environment as she won the biggest title of her career. She reached the finals at both the French Open and Wimbledon last year, so its hard to believe, that this win was only her 2nd WTA Tour level victory of her career. On her way to the finals this week, Jasmine beat Lulu Sun, Jelena Ostapenko, Diana Shnaider and Peyton Stearns. The analysts deemed her to be a heavy underdog in the final as she was set to play Coco Gauff. Coco had struggled mightily with both her serve and her forehand in the SF but somehow managed to get past Qinwen in a 3rd set tiebreak. One thing was for certain though, if Coco played at the same level as she did in the Semi's, you had to like Jasmine's chances in the final. Sure enough, Coco sprayed balls all over the yard and Jasmine took full advantage. Thanks to Coco's 55 unforced errors (Jasmine only won 72 points lol), Jasmine won in routine fashion 6-4,6-2.
Interestingly enough the victory by Paolini was a rain delay away from not happening! In the QF against Diana Shnaider, Paolini was down a set and 4 love! Safe to say, she was about 5 to 10 minutes away from getting eliminated when the rains came and forced a lengthy delay. Once they came back, Diana struggled to find the court and Jasmine won the next 6 games to win the 2nd set and Diana never recovered.
Meanwhile, the craziest thing that happened in the womens event wasn't Jasmine's title run! No, instead it was the ramifications to the French Open Seedings from this weeks results - The 3 time French Open winner - Iga Swiatek - will be the 5 seed!!!!
The story of the mens event was simple from day 1 - The Return of Jannik Sinner! Due to a suspension for something that his team did (I'm still not sure how I feel about him accepting this suspension to be honest), Jannik hadn't played a single match in 4 months (Since he won the AO). When the draw came out, his chances at a long run seemed rather tricky as it looked like he was going to have to beat 2 really talented players (Alejandro Davidovich Fokina and Francisco Cerundolo) just to get to the QF. Due to the inactivity, you had to expect him to luck rusty, but instead he made the finals rather comfortably as he beat Mariano Navone, Jesper De Jong, Francisco Cerundolo, Casper Ruud, and Tommy Paul. (he completely dismantled the defending Madrid Champion (Ruud) 6-0,6-1).
Meanwhile, on the other side of the draw was Carlos Alcaraz and although he didn't look anywhere near his best for most of the week, it was still plenty good enough for him to get to the final. Even when he's not playing his best, that level is still crazy high and filled with incredible highlights. He beat Dusan Lajovic, Laslo Djere, Karen Khachanov, Jack Draper, and Lorenzo Musetti in order to make the final. The only set he lost on his way to final was to Khachanov.
The Final between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner is something that fans and analysts have been salivating and begging for for quite some time. Currently, they have the best rivalry in the mens game and its aided even further by the fact that a couple of their previous matches were played at a sky high level (the 2024 match in Beijing is the best Bo3 match I've seen in at least a decade).
It was hard to know what to expect in the final though as Jannik is the #1 player (by a large margin btw, and had lost 1 match TOTAL since August of 2024!!), but Carlos had beaten him in their last 3 matches before the final started. Alcaraz had also won the French Open in 2024 and has appeared to be the best clay court player in the world over the past couple of years. Honestly, it felt like a pick-em type of match, and for most of the 1st set, it actually felt like Sinner was the better player. In fact, he even had a 40-15 break chance at 6-5, and missed a rather routine forehand on Set Point. Sadly for Jannik, he never got another chance as Carlos played a great tiebreak and won the first set. Jannik struggled to find the court with his first serve to start the 2nd set (and paid for it), and 15 minutes later, he was down 5 love! It was a huge win by Carlos this week as he's now up #2 in the world, and will be seeded #2 at the French Open. How great would it be if we could see a rematch in the final at the French Open?
btw it was really interesting to watch how differently Carlos plays against Sinner as compared to how he plays against EVERYONE else! Carlos plays with a certain level of patience when he plays against Sinner, as he knows that if he opens the court with his forehand, Jannik will just take the ball up the line and the point is over. He also plays a tonne of loopy forehands as he's trying to get Jannik out of rhythm. It will be interesting to see if Jannik's team has a change of gameplan to help adjust to this approach.
In terms of FTL, the week was fairly tricky for most of us, as the Return of Jannik posed a couple of huge questions that everyone had to answer - What would it cost to trade in Sinner? Can I afford to not have Sinner this week?
Interestingly enough, the winner of the week, decided that it wasn't worth it to trade him in! I'd like to offer a huge kuddos to Tom U (Tennis The Menace) on his first ever FTL Victory!! He had both winners, another finalist (Gauff), a SF (Musetti) and 2 other QF (Ruud and Mirra).
Considering how tightly packed the Leaderboard was this week, if Sinner does end up being victorious, Tom wouldn't have won the Week. I can only imagine how emotional he was as he watched that first set!!! lol
For Option 2, Sam G (Bagels & Breadsticks) found his way to the first place result. He beat Christie (Controlled Aggression) by 2.05 points!!! Both managers had both winners and Gauff as a finalist. Hard to believe but the biggest difference in the week was that Sam selected Emma Raducanu as his Dark Horse!!! For someone that had barely won a match on the dirt in her entire career, her putting up nearly 50 points was incredibly special and a truly inspired selection!
Interesting to see that both Sam and Christie made the same decision as Tom did about not trading in Sinner and were rewarded for their efforts!
I'd like to also give a shoutout to Natatatat (Salty and Sweet) who finished 2nd just 3.587 points behind our winner. Preston (Maya Joint is Lit) was the manager that finished the highest (6th) that selected Jannik Sinner. If Jannik ends up winning, I think its a pretty safe bet that Preston ends up being victorious. (makes that routine FH miss on SP even harder to take!!)
