The grass swing is upon us and FTL managers raced to bring those players who have skills on the surface. Shelton, Fritz, and De Minaur were among the popular trade ins this week and most of them deliveded but as usual there were quite a few surprises in store.
There was controversy at Queens when the organisers refused to give a wild card to defending champ Tatjana Maria. Could she come through qualifying and teach those snooty Brits as lesson? It certainly looked on the cards when she found herself a set up on Rybakina in the 2nd round but it Rybakina wasn't going to let lightning strike twice and comfortably turned the match around.
But it was to be another qualifier that frustrated the Brits at Queens. Both Boulter and Raducanu were having a great week - Boulter scoring a massive win over Rybakina in the quarters and Raducanu got her revenge on Cirstea (who beat her in Cluj) and then young talent Jovic to reach the final. But an inspired Vekic took care of them both downing Boulter in the semi final and Raducanu in the final with some incredible tennis!
We had two surprise winners in the men's and women's events in Rosmalen.
Maybe he was inspired by the exploits of his countrywoman Maja Chwalinska at the French Open because Kamil Majchrak went on a ridiculous tear through the big names of the Libema Open. Medvedev in the Quarter Finals, FAA in the semi finals and then a hard fought win over De Minaur in the final. Its fair to say with that list of conquests on grass, you're definitely earned your title.
The women's event brought us an even more surprising winner but also a bit of an anti climax in the end. And again like Queens, it was a qualifier who took the title. While the top two seeds Alexandrova and Tauson lost in the 1st round, Robin Montgomery dropped just one set en route to the final scoring wins over Kasatkina, Minnen, Sniger and Tomljanovic. The final appeared to be a long shot for her with her opponent being former Wimbledon champ Barbora Krejcikova who showing some fine form on the grass but sadly Barbora withdrew from the final with injury and Robin was awarded the trophy.
We were to see more familiar faces competing in the final of Stuttgart. The American pair Taylor Fritz and Ben Shelton will have been popular picks for the grass swing. It was far from plain sailing though. Fritz came back from a set down in his early matches against Landaluce and Belluci. And Shelton led even more of a charmed life coming back from a similar set deficit against three opponents Giron, Shimabukuro and Lehecka. It was fitting that the final delivered another three setter and it was Shelton who came out triumphant securing his 2nd title of the season.
Here is the global league leaderboard for the game week.
It was another tight game week with Big D and his team cloudy with a chance of green balls coming top of the pile by just 0.105 points from Andre Tudor and his team Rybakanu. Have we ever had a closer finish?
Here is the head to head between the two teams
Rybakanu actually boasted the only winner of the two teams in the shape of Ben Shelton and also the highest scoring player in the shape of Emma Raducanu who proved to be an inspired pick. Big D had 2 finalists and crucially had Fritz in the Captaincy role while ironically Rybakanu's decision to choose Rybakina as Captain ended up costing them.
