Game Week 12 - Madrid - Weekly results

 

The cake sizes may have been different but the trophies were thankfully the same size.  Birthday buddies Aryna Sabalenka and Carlos Alcaraz are your Madrid Champions after 2 weeks of fantastic tennis in the Spanish capital.

Both Iga and Aryna had one minor hiccup en route the final,  Iga losing a set to Alexandrova in the Round of 16 and Aryna had to come from a set down against Mayar Sherif in the Quarters.  Ultimately though Aryna got her wish and had a chance for immediate revenge for the defeat in Stuttgart as the World no's 1 and 2 faced off in consecutive tournaments for the first time since Davenport and Hingis back in 2000.  It was a top quality final which had an interesting pattern after 3-3 in the 1st set of Aryna wining 3 games then Iga winning 3 games then Aryna winning 3 games until Aryna held her nerve to see off her foe with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 victory. This rivalry looks like being a great one for women's tennis.

One half of the mens draw went very much according to plan with local hero Carlos Alcaraz cruising to the final save for a minor scare against Ruusuvuori in his 2nd Round match. The other half of the draw provided the story of the week in the shape of veteran German Jan Lennard Struff.  After losing to Aslan Karatsev in qualifying, Struffy got a reprieve with a lucky loser spot and took full advantage. As more fancied names like Medvedev and Fritz fell by the wayside, we had an unlikely quarter final line-up of Struff against Tsitsipas and that man Karatsev against Chinese newcomer Zhang.  Struff defied the odds to see of Stefanos and then turned the tables on Karatsev in the semi final.  It was always going to be a tall order for JLS to overcome Alcaraz but he gave it a damn good shot and definitely had the young Spaniard rattled for a large part of the match but Carlos finally managed to prevail 6-3 in the deciding set.

FTL Results

Here is the winning team and final table for Game Week 12.

Massive congrats to Bibek for a quite astonishing game week. I remember nearly falling off my chair when I saw that Bibek still had a full squad going into the 2nd week of Madrid when I'd lost more than half my team! 

Like many he had both winners Alcaraz and Sabalenka and also runner up Swiatek. But he also had 3 quarter finalists in Greek pair Tsitsipas and Sakkari and DH Coric.  All of his other players managed at least 2 wins during the week.

All that added up to a resounding game week triumph with Bibek ending up almost a full 100 points ahead of the chasing pack.  In fact only Arnaud (742.947) points and Tosh (738.927 points) finished with 100 points of the leader.  Both of them can be delighted however with an excellent game week. 

 

April Monthly Leaderboard

Attached is the final monthly leaderboard for April together with a breakdown of the weekly scores for the top 7 contenders. 

Congrats to Asier Fernandez (Euskal Herria)  who finished on top after a very close battle with Robyn (Thanks but no Shanks)  and Sonja (Acecream).  Asier, Robyn and Sonja all had 3 top 10 finishes this month which made for an entertaining chase!

WTA Rome Draw

 

Rome Masters - Game Week 13

 

The Rome Masters commence next week and it will be another 2 week event with WTA qualifiers starting tomorrow.  The Draw for the WTA Event will take place at 7 pm local time in the Colosseum and the ATP will take place tomorrow at the Piazza di Spagna.  We'll bring both draws to you in the usual places as soon as they are released. 

There are a number of considerations for FTL Managers to take in account....

Firstly, we will be cracking on with the FTL Cup 2nd Round which will see the return of the Group Winners from the preliminary stage who received a bye past the 1st Round.  Make sure to check out your opponent using the wonderful H2H function on the FTL app,  A lot of teams are looking very similar now so think carefully about which members of your squad might prove to be a useful differential. Cup draw attached.

Secondly there is some serious thinking to be done around team selections.  The return of Novak from injury is probably the biggest dilemma facing us.  Normally Novak would be a stick on for Rome, RG, Wimbledon and beyond but sub par performances in Monte Carlo and Banja Luka plus concerns around his fitness and match sharpness make trading him in for 22.3m a bit of a gamble.  Jannik Sinner and Ons Jabeur are also due to return after missing Madrid but will they be 100% for this event?

It would seem that the trio of Alcaraz, Swiatek and Sabalenka are a stick on for every team after their success on the clay already this year. But one has to wonder whether fatigue may catch up with Carlos and the conditions in Rome and Paris will perhaps not suit Aryna's game as much as the high altitude conditions in Madrid. 

And then there are players like Zverev and Ruud and Coco Gauff who played so well at the French Open last year but don't seem to be anywhere near the  top of their game just now.

Will you be tempted to gamble on a lower priced differential in your team?  Who would have imagined that in the semi finals of Madrid, we would see Lucky Loser Jan Lennard Struff defeat the man who defeated him in qualifying - Aslan Karatsev.   If you are needing points to push you up the table perhaps now is the time to take a chance on a leftfield option. 

And the final dilemma to take into account when you are doing your trades for this week is the small matter of Game Week 14 (ATP events in Geneva & Lyon and WTA events in Strasbourg and Rabat).  The entry lists for these events have been released but the close proximity to the French Open will mean that late withdrawals are likely.

Many of you may have been dismayed that you only have 2 or 3 players for these events and will be looking to bring in a couple of players to bolster your team in the hope that you can field a team of 7 or 8 in the game week.  But who to chose?  The likes of Sakkari, Ruud and Fritz are some of the bigger name players who could strengthen your squad. Perhaps Norrie with the grass court swing in mind. Maybe Trevisan who defends her title in Rabat or young talent Ben Shelton who is a fairly cheap option at present.  This could be a key week in the FTL Season as the line-ups are likely to vary more than they do at the bigger events.

So grab a bottle of wine and have a good think about what changes you will make to your team before lockout.

Oh......and don't forget you have dark horses to pick as well but lets not go there for now!  ;) 

Game Week 14 Entry Lists

 Here are the entry lists for Game Week 14

ATP Geneva

ATP Lyon

WTA Strasbourg

WTA Rabat

Please note that these lists are likely to change given the close proximity to the French Open.

Amanda Anisimova should be removed from the Strasbourg list as she is currently taking a break from the tour.

I will try and keep the schedule spreadsheet as up to date!

Season Leaderboard after Game Week 11

 

Fedex Superstars (Muhammad) are still hanging on to 1st place but Thanks But No Shanks closed the gamp to just 6 points after an excellent 10th place finish in the game week.

No change in positions 3 to 5 as Prepare for Czech Mate (Tricia), Metty's Marvels (Graham) and FC Vepyrite (Silvi) maintain their good start to the season but they didn't make any ground on the top 2.

The big mover within the top 10 is Arnodinho who moved up 4 places to 6th spot after an impressive 11th place finish in the game week.  The Champs (Marc Sab) moves up 2 spots to 7th.

Game Week 11 - Final Leaderboard

 

For those FTLers who pay attention to recent tennis history, this week should have been a pretty good one as we ended up with 6 of the same finalists from the equivalent events last year and 3 of the same champions!  It was also a week when some managers decided to drop some big players in the expectation that they may withdraw or lose early. Some of these gambles paid off. Some spectacularly failed!

It was the same final and the same outcome in Munich as Holger Rune defended his title in a remarkable match against Botic Van de Zandschulp.  But it could have been oh so different with Botic being a double break up in the deciding set and Rune seemingly compromised by a shoulder injury and then an ankle injury. Botic became too passive however and allowed the young Dane to claw his way back into the set and clinch the win in the tie break leaving a visibly crestfallen Botic to look on as Holger collected his BMW (has he passed his test yet) and the obligatory lederhosen!!

And it was same story in another part of Germany as Iga Swiatek cruised to a straight sets win over Aryna Sabalenka winning another Porsche for her collection.  Aryna grudgingly congratulated Iga on winning another car before asking if they could have 2 cars next year as she had been runner up 3 times in a row now. She insisted she would keep coming back until she won the car before taking a jestful swipe at the car with her racquet as Iga was being shown to the door.  She really really REALLY wanted that car.

And it was the same champ again in Barcelona as an imperious Carlos Alcaraz cruised to a comfortable win over a magnanimous Stefanos Tsitsipas before taking the obligatory pool jump!

The only champ from last year not to defend his title was Andrey Rublev but to be fair the event had been moved from Serbia to Bosnia so perhaps that upset the cosmic balance in terms of history repeating itself.  What a week it turned out to be though for Dusan Lajovic who defeated Djokovic and Kecmanovic en route to defeating Rublev in the final. Shout out to Emi at this stage for being the only person to play Lajovic which turned out to be pivotal to her win in the FTL Cup!

So over to FTL and its a massive congrats to Mark McDonald who was top dog this game with an oustanding score of 526.97 points. Mark had 3 of the 4 champs in Alcaraz (Capt), Swiatek (KP) and Rune (TP) as well as runners up Tsitsipas and Sabalenka.  He also had decent points from leftfield pick Alex Molcan which ultimately proved very valuable.

Congrats also to Craig Miller who finished a tantalising 4 points behind 1st place. Craig actually had the same winners and runners up as Mark and a further runner up in Rublev. But FTL is a game of very small margins and crucial decisions and ultimately it was the placement of Djokovic a Captain that ultimately cost Craig the weekly win.

Asier Fernandez and Andy Riel were both pretty close to the top of the pile too. Both had 3 winners and 2 runners up.  Andy had a great pick with Botic in the Munich event.

Sagar Chowdhry, Tony, Yoann and Pete Schaumann all cleared 500 points for the game week. Well done to all.

Here is the final weekly table and winning team!