Game Week 16 draws

 

ATP Hertogenbosch

ATP Stuttgart

WTA Hertogenbosch

WTA Nottingham

Overall Leaderboard after the French Open

 Here is the overall leaderboard after the French Open

We seem to have had the same three teams jostling for the top spot for some time now and in this game week it was Robyn who took the initiative as her 4th place game week finish allowed her to steal a march on her rivals Muhammad who finished 60th in the game week and Tricia who finished in 46 th.

The chasing pack still have them in their sights however with Silvi rising 2 places to lead the peleton in 4th.  Marc Sab and the champs move up 3 places into 5th position and Samir is up 7 places to 6th position after an excellent game week in which he finished 3rd. 

Dutch Dynamite and Metty's Marvels tumbled out the top 10 after a French Open both would like to forget. 

Luke Angus moved up 19 places to 54th after his game week win.

French Open - Final Leaderboard

There were a number of questions facing FTL Managers going into this year's French Open.

Djokovic's form during the clay swing had been patchy with questions marks over his fitness.  Would he peak, as he so often does, at the important moment and clinch a historic 23rd Grand Slam final.  The answer was a resounding YES.  His biggest challenge came against young pretender Carlos Alcaraz when we seemed to be on the verge of a modern tennis classic at 1 set all before the young Spaniard's challenge was derailed by cramp.

Would Iga Swiatek be able to defend her title having herself had an injury scare in Rome and would she be able to fend off the challenge of her main rivals this season, Rybakina and Sabalenka?  The answer again was YES. Rybakina's withdrawal and Sabalenka's defeat to Karolina Muchova meant that it was actually the uber-talented Czech who provided the opposition for the reigning champ in the final with Iga just managing to hold off Karolina's comeback in a tense 3 setter.

And how about Medvedev who made a mockery of his supposed claycourt aversion by winning the Rome title! Well Daniil was about to make a mockery of everyone who picked him as he was a 1st Round exit at the hands of Brazilian Thiago Seyboth Wild.

And what of last years runner up, Casper Ruud who quite frankly had frustrated his many owners with some less than impressive results this year and was left on the bench or traded out of many teams. Those who stayed faithful to Casper the Friendly Ghost were to rewarded handsomely as he repeated his run to the RG final beating scandanavian foe Holger Rune and a resurgent Sascha Zverev with remarkable ease. Unfortunately he didn't have enough to challenge Novak in the final despite a strong opening set. 

Many FTL managers got these important calls correct and made decent dark horse picks to score highly in this game week. The top 7 teams in the game week were separated by just 25 points.

Here is the final French Open leaderboard. 

Congratulations to Luke Angus and his Australian Army for clinching one of the most coveted prizes in the FTL Calendar - the French Open title.

Here is Luke's winning team

Luke had both champions and runner up Casper Ruud as well as semi finalists Sabalenka and Alcaraz.  He could have scored higher had he gone with his ER1 Sascha Zverev rather than Garcia or Coric. Luke had excellent dark horse picks in Sebastian Ofner and Sloane Stephens who both reached the 4th Round. 

Cleeve took 2nd place finishing just over 13 points behind. Rybakina's withdrawal proved to be costly for his slam aspirations but he also had solid dark horse picks in Jarry and Cocciaretto who scored that impressive 1st Round win over Kvitova.

Samir takes 3rd place just 16 points behind but like many of us was the victim of Medvedev's surprise 1st Round exit when ERs Fritz and Cerundolo would have given him the game week had he chose them ahead of Daniil.

And just 1 point further back was Robyn who moved to the top of the overall leaderboard with another excellent game week. In Robyn's case it was Jess Pegula who let the side down with her surprise 3rd Round loss to Elise Mertens.

WEBSITE IMPROVEMENT

An improvement was made in the Player Statistics portion of the website.  You are able to sort (from high to low) every column in both the Price/Stats and the Ownership.

If you decide that you would like to sort the players by the number of points they have accumulated for the week, simply click on the Points column.

 

If you want to know the breakdown for the Dark Horse Category for the week, enter the Ownership tab, and click on the Dark Horse Column.  It will sort the players that have been selected in the Dark Horse Category (from high to low).

OVERALL LEADERBOARD - AFTER GW14

GameWeek 14 didnt create a tonne of movement inside the top 10, but there was a bit of movement inside the top 3.

Aoun (Fedex Superstars) continues to lead, and thanks to his  46th place finish this past week, his lead continues to grow as he now leads by a little over a 100 points.    He will tell you that he had a frustrating week, as he had 3 Round 1 losses (Ramos Vinolas, Muller, and Schwartzman) and when you combine that with Fritz's horrible loss, it just left a bad taste in his mouth.  Must be nice to struggle and still increase your lead by 40+ points lol

Tricia (Prepare for CzechMate) moved up a spot and now sits in 2nd.  She finished 23rd this week and gained approx 35 points on our leader.   Her continued faith in Nicolas Jarry paid off this week.   I'm sure she's still wondering why Tomas Martin Etcheverry withdrew after the lockout!!?!?!

Robyn (Thanks But No Shanks) has really struggled the past couple of weeks, as she hasn't finished inside the top 75 in either week.  She finished 92nd in Rome and 99th this past week.  She lost 50 points to Aoun at Rome and another 70 this week.  She's now a 135 points behind our leader.  Robyn started the GW with only 4 players, so she already knew that she was going to lose ground, the only question was just how much.

The biggest movement inside the top 10 was Dragan (Nadal's Forehand) as he moved up 4 places and now sits in 9th thanks to a 7th place finish.  The craziest part about this result was that he did so without having a single player make a final!

GAMEWEEK 14 FINAL RESULTS

Game Weeks the week before a Slam tend to be some of the most difficult to know what to expect, and GW14 showed to be no different.  Once Madrid and Rome became multiple week events, the thought by many was that due to the calendar being significantly shorter for many players, this week might see an uptick in the quality of field, as anyone that had poor results in either event would be keen to play.  Sadly this was not the case - especially in the womens events.  The events in Geneva and Lyon had pretty solid fields to be honest, and were helped out when FAA, Dimitrov and Zverev took WC's.  Meanwhile between Rabat and Strasbourg there were 20+ withdrawals, and not a single top 20 player ended up playing in either event.  The WTA has been difficult to predict at the best of times, but I cannot imagine being a fan trying to buy tickets in advance when there is no information as to who is actually set to play in an event.  Neither event posted any sort of update as to who had withdrawn before the Main Draw was created.  Its hard to argue that false advertising didn't take place at both events.  

Meanwhile, I'd like to give a shoutout to our 4 event winners - Elina Svitolina, Lucia Bronzetti, Arthur Fils and Nicolas Jarry.  All 4 have one thing in common - of them were unseeded. 

Elina Svitolina won for the 17th time in her illustrious career.  I'll be honest, she looked done n dusted in her SemiFinal match with Burel - Burel led a set n 4-1.  I know I know, a lot of people would say who cares and mention that she's a former top 5 player and she did nothing but win a Mickey Mouse 250 level event.  Well I dunno, I think she deserves some serious props.  She's only been back on tour for 7 weeks, and after her win this week, her ranking is now inside the top 200 - not bad for just having a baby a short time ago.  Elina has had some great results at the French Open, but Martina Trevisan awaits her in R1.  Trevisan has had the best results of her career at the French, so their matchup should definitely be interesting.

Lucia Bronzetti's victory in Rabat is her first WTA Tour level victory of her career.  Just think she has something in common with a former top 5 player, Maria Sakkari lol.  If she wins again, maybe Sakkari will just be a side note but for now, its rather cool to have that in common.  Her week was rather strange to be honest.  In her last 4 matches, she either played a 2.5+ hour 3 set war, or she lost 2 games lol.  Her victories over Tatjana Maria and Jule Grabher are something that she truly had to dig deep for, meanwhile I am not sure if Alycia Parks or Sloane Stephens actually showed up for their match lol  Now the question, can she cause Ons Jabeur problems in R1 in Paris?

Nicolas Jarry winning an event on the dirt in altitude? hmmmm I think I've heard this before.  Yup, just a couple of months ago, Nicolas won his home event in Santiago  - on the dirt in altitude.   At the time, it seemed like his best win of the week was over Diego Schwartzman, but as the season has gone on his best win that week was over either Yannick Hanfmann or Tomas Martin Etcheverry.  Well in Geneva, he showed just how dangerous he can truly be again as he beat Casper Ruud, Alexander Zverev and Grigor Dimitrov in successive matches.  Should we expect a deep run in Paris? hmm hard to tell, as Jarry had a record of 3 wins and 5 Losses between Santiago and Geneva.

Arthur Fils first ever ATP Tour victory is something that he'll never forget.  I'll say this tho, it didn't have some strange controversy n twists n turns along the way.  He told the press after that he didn't believe he was actually going to win until the final ball was struck.  His week started with chaos - Mikael Ymer got defaulted for smacking his racquet against the Umpires chair.  He then got a WalkOver from Felix Auger Aliassime, and then played a 3 set war against Brandon Nakashima that he had to win in a tiebreak.  He then beat Francisco Cerundolo in the final.  Arthur has had some absolutely incredible results in France over the past 6 months - SemiFinal results in both Montpellier and Marseille.  So now the real question, can he continue this type of run in Paris?? Alejandro Davidovich Fokina stands in his way in R1.  Its never easy to play just a couple of days after your first victory, so it could be a big ask. 

Now onto the FTL, our FTL CUP brainchild and our Twitter Account genius (YES, ITS THE SAME GUY!)  had his first win in a little over 2 years.  Jer Hetherington (Dukla Pumpherston) has struggled mightily all season, but maybe just maybe this is the week that he points to where everything changed for the better.  He finished last year inside the top 5, so its definitely possible.  He amassed an incredible 344 point this week - there was only 1 manager that was even within 40 points of him.  His week got off to a bit of an auspicious start as one of his Team Players, Elise Mertens, withdrew well after the first Main Draw match had started.  Jer only had 1 winner (Jarry) but he did have another finalist (Dimitrov).  He also had Taylor Fritz and Sloane Stephens reach the SF.

 

Billy B (Iga's Bakery) finished 2nd just 5 points behind our winner.  Billy would have won the GW if Anna Blinkova had managed to have beaten Elina Svitolina in the Strasbourg final.  Billy played more women, 5,  this week (Linette, Blinkova, Stephens, Putintseva, Parks) than I have on my entire roster lol. 

I normally give a shoutout to the remainder of our top 5, but when you are 40+ points back in a short week, I'm not sure you deserve it ;)

 

 

FRENCH OPEN DRAWS - FTL VERSION

The French Open Main Draw is available for both the Men and Women.  I have provided the FTL Version for both plus the Qualifying Draws as well.  I have also broken down the Dark Horse category for both the Men and Women.  FRENCH OPEN DRAWS

If you to have your own version, simple click on FILE, scroll to MAKE A COPY, and rename it.