I'd like to offer a huge kuddos to our winners this week - Tatjana Maria, Gabriel Diallo, Elise Mertens and Taylor Fritz
The week following a slam is always tough. The week following a slam where they change surface is virtually impossible. I'd like to tell you that you could look at how a players fared over the past couple of events and that would help give you some insight as to how they might do in such a scenario - but I can tell you this flat out - it didn't LOL.
Lets start with Tatjana Maria. Her victory in Queens might be one of the most hard to figure results in years. Coming into the week, Tatjana had a total of 6 WTA Tour Level Main Draw wins since Nottingham (thats a full year) of last year! She came into the week on a 9 match losing streak, and then somehow won 2 matches in Qualifying and then beat 5 top 30 ranked players and won the title!!!! She lost 1 set all week (Karolina Muchova) as she managed to dispatch Leylah Fernandez, Karolina Muchova, Elena Rybakina, Madison Keys and Amanda Anisimova. Lets add a little bit of context to these results, Muchova, Rybakina and Keys are 3 of the top 5 or 6 faves to win Wimbledon! Another crazy fact is that it had been over a year and a half since she beat a single player ranked inside the top 50 LOL.
I can tell you this flat out, that Tatjana has looked like she hasn't belonged on the Main Tour for quite some time, so for her to win a 500 level event, is beyond hard to fathom. With this new found confidence, its safe to say that the top ranked players won't be hoping to see her in Round 1 at Wimbledon!
Gabriel Diallo came into the S'Hert event without a single career ATP Tour Level Main Draw grass court win. 1 week later, he has 5 and came away with his first career event victory! On his way to the title, he beat 3 of the faves to win the title - Jordan Thompson, Karen Khachanov, and Ugo Humbert. Diallo's game has come a long way over the past couple of years (the positive results on the dirt was shocking btw), but this result was hard to see coming. His ranking (44) is now up to a career high, so it will be interesting to see if his ranking continues to rise as the season goes on. He could cause some problems at Wimbledon.
The last time everyone saw Elise Mertens, she shockingly lost in Round 1 at the French Open!!! She wasn't considered a threat to win the French, but its normally a safe assumption that she'll at least win 2 or 3 rounds! Elise received a tonne of flack for losing to a French Wild Card that was ranked outside the top 300, and in all honesty, it felt warranted! Crazily enough, as each day passed the loss starting making more n more sense, as Boisson reached the SemiFinal as she beat 2 top 10 players (Jessica Pegula and Mirra Andreeva) in the process! Coming into the week, you had to wonder just what Elise's head space was going to be and if that shocking loss was something that could snowball on her. Instead Mertens won 5 matches and won the title. I'd like to tell you that it was an easy win, but in her SemiFinal match with Ekaterina Alexandrova, Elise held off 11 Match Points in the 2nd set!!! YES, YES, I did say ELEVEN! I'd like to tell you that Elise did something special, but this was more a matter of what Alexandrova didn't do and that was keep the ball in the court lol - in the process of saving those 11 match points, Elise only hit 1 Winner! The craziest thing about this victory for Elise, is that she joined a small group of players that have won 10 events on the WTA Tour!!
Taylor Fritz has had one of those years that he'd like to forget. The year started great where he helped his team win the United Cup, but he got injured during the final against Hubert Hurkacz, and just hasn't looked right ever since. Since Miami, he's won 2 matches in an event only once and hadn't beaten a player ranked inside the top 40 in the process. To make matters worse, just like Elise, he lost in Round 1 at the French Open. Amazingly enough he won 4 matches this week in Stuttgart without losing a set. When he beat Felix Auger Aliassime in the Semi Final, he must have laughed hard with his team when he saw that he was going to have to play Alexander Zverev in the Final. Last year he reached a career high (4) in the rankings and a big part of that success was due to his 4-0 record against Zverev in huge matches. One interesting development in the week for Fritz was his success in the tiebreak - he won 3. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, but he had lost his past 7!!!
In terms of FTL, the week was tragic for many of our managers. Many of the top traded in players, Ludmilla Samsonova, Elena Rybakina, Hubert Hurkacz, Daniil Medvedev, and Daria Kasatkina either lost in Round 1 or were vanquished before the end of their Second Match. But, it wasn't all bad news for everyone!!!
In fact Tony (Dreamteam) accumulated an incredible 355.45 points as he came away with the Victory! You know that it was a tricky week, when even the winner still had a player lose in Round 1 (Samsonova) and had 2 other players lose in Round 2 (Medvedev and Navarro). BUT you can get away with this thanks to having 2 winners (Fritz and Diallo), a finalist (Zverev) and a SF (Keys).
There were 2 other managers that finished within 10 points of Tony! John O (Wasaga Beach Warriors) lost by 3.558 points and is victorious if Zverev finds a way to beat Fritz. I'm sure that was a rather crazy feeling for Tony as he was hoping against his Captain!!! Pretty amazing that both of them had Diallo!! Elaine (evjlkstennis25) also finished just 8.908 points back and ends up being victorious if a heavily favoured Anisimova beats Tatjana Maria in the Final!
