CANADA OPEN DRAWS AND DARK HORSE SELECTION

I have attached the Canadian Open Draws for the Upcoming Game Week.  Both the Mens and Womens Main and Qualifying Draws are accessible, and so too is a break down of the Dark Horse selection.  Click on the link CANADA OPEN in order to access it.  If you want to create a copy, Click on FILE, Scroll down to CREATE A COPY. 

Overall Leaderboard after Game Week 21

Muhammad still leads the at the top of the leaderboard as the top 4 remain unchanged.

Silvi (FC Vepyrite) made up the most ground this week with an impressive 455.92 points and a 2nd place fame week finish and Mikhail moved up a spot from 10th to 9th thanks to his 4th place finish. 

With less than 20 points separating the teams from 2nd to 5th, it could be all change after this game week and the teams ranked 6th to 10th are also very much in the race.

GW21 Results

 And so endeth another action packed week of fantasy tennis with 6 titles decided....

This week was a pretty good one for home players.  

Iga Swiatek was the most obvious captaincy choice for FTL managers and she cruised to the title against a fairly weak Warsaw field.  Her only significant rival for the title was the woman who faced her in the RG final -  Karolina Muchova but Karolina's hopes crashed when she contrived to lose her 2nd Round match from a position of 5-1 (40-15) in the final set. Ultimately it was Laura Siegemund who was the unfortunate lamb to the slaughter in the final and Iga duly delivered a bakery special (6-0, 6-1)

Alexander Zverev finally got back to winning ways in his native Hamburg. It was a strong field at the Rothenbaum but the stars of the week weren't Ruud or Rublev or Musetti as anticipated but rather Laslo Djere and Arthur Fils who both played impressive tennis as they progressed deep in the event.  In the end, however, neither had enough to trouble Zverev despite their best efforts.

In the women's event it was another local girl, Noma Noha Akague who delighted the home fans as she turned in some impressive battling performances to reach the final in her 1st ever WTA level event. Nerves seem to get the better of her in the final though as she lost the first set 6-0  before succumbing in the tie break in a much tighter 2nd set to the Dutchwoman Arantxa Rus.  Arantxa (who incidentally received her trophy from a more legendary tennising Arantxa) has won more than thirty lower tier events on the circuit but this was her first WTA title so definitely a special moment for her.

Continuing the home player theme (was this a bit tenuous? 😂), Taylor Fritz took the title in Atlanta defeating young Chinese prospect Yibing Wu, veteran Japanese legend Kei Nishikori and JJ Wolf on the way to the final.  His Australian opponent Aleksandar Vukic was the first player to take a set off Fritz all week but he couldn't prevent Taylor from securing a much needed title which should hopefully stand him in good stead for the US series.  

I'd set out to include Clara Burel and Dianne Parry in my home player themed report but then I realised they were playing in Lausanne in Switzerland and not in France as my tiring brain briefly imagined.  The French ladies did have a great week however and it was Clara who prevailed in the all French semi final.  The title however was to go to Italian Elisabetta Cocciaretto (2 ts, 2 cs, 1r, 2ts) who managed several houdini acts across the course of the week to win her first WTA title as she battled past Burel in a tight 3 setter. (There was actually a contingent of 7 Swiss women scheduled for this event but Bencic pulled out and Teichman was the only one of the remaining 6 to win a match) 

There was however a Swiss in the final of Umag (in erm Croatia - i may have gone off on a tangent here) but sadly Stan Wawrinka couldn't quite get his hands on what would have been a remarkable title as he was just pipped by Alexei Popyrin who came back from a set down to win. 

So the whole purpose of this home player theme was to seamlessly move across to the FTL results for the week and extend hearty congratulations to an FTL home favourite, our commander in chief, Rick Marsonet who secured his first game week victory in..to quote Rick  "quite some time".  Rick wasn't counting any chickens though as we approached the last final of the week. He was definitely a little worried that Fritz might not muster the 0.7 points required to move him to the top of the leaderboard!  It was never in doubt.

Here is the final game week table. 

Rick managed to amass a very impressive 467 points but was closely followed home by the chasing pack of Silvi (FC Vepyrite), Craig (OverServed), Mikhail (Roger That) and Jon (The Bakery)

One of the main reason behind Rick's success this week was the fact that he only had 8 players available which took the possibility of him leaving a high scoring player on the bench - out of the equation.  This has been a particular area of frustration for Rick this season!!  Another good reason for his success was the selection of Arthur Fils.  Rick had 3 of this weeks title winners in Swiatek, Zverev and Fritz but it was  those semi final points accrued by the talented French youngster that gave Rick the edge over his closest rivals. 

A hearty FTL congrats to Rick - our game week 21 Champion!

OVERALL LEADERBOARD - AFTER GW20

The top of the Overall Leaderboard continues to get tighter and tighter, as everyone inside the top 7 is separated by less than 250 points and 15 managers are within 500 points. At the very top though, Thanks But No Shanks (Robyn) lead evaporated days after she took the lead at Wimbledon. 

 

Fedex Superstars (Aoun) finished 16th in the GameWeek and now has a 60+ point lead over Robyn.  He had 2 winners (Rublev, and Mannarino), and 1 finalist.  I can tell you this much for certain though, Aoun IS STILL CURSING a couple of his players for some inexplicable results - Kasatkina, Putintseva and Tommy Paul in particular.  If Putintseva and Paul win their matches it would have made a huge difference to be honest

Thanks But No Shanks (Robyn) had a real tough week as she finished 54th.   Sadly her 15 point didn't last very long as a result, but at least for her sake, she still managed to only drop 1 spot.  She had Rublev as her Captain, so at least she got that right :)

PREPARE FOR CZECH MATE (Tricia) finished 30th this week, and moved up a spot and now sits in 3rd.  She picked up 40 points on Robyn, but did end up losing ground to the overall lead (approx 145 points) as a result of Aoun's solid finish.  She had the entire SemiFinal and Zverev in Bastad, but beyond that she didnt accumulate many points elsewhere.

 

Nadals Forehand (Dragan) finished 38th this week and moved up a spot and now sits in 4th.  His week is kinda like a what if type of scenario though to be honest, as the week started great, but ended with a thud as he didnt end up with a single winner of an event.  Im sure he's wondering what could have been when it comes to Jordan Thompson, Emma Navarro, Yulia Putinseva and Tommy Paul.

nbladeweilder (Nikhil) finished 105th for the week and dropped 2 spots and now sits in 5th. The withdrawal bug ate his teams lunch before the GW even started, so he knew he was in trouble before a single ball was event played - only had 5 players.  Two R1 losses from Etcheverry and Sonego made things even worse. Sadly, he also didnt have a single player make a final - even though it looked like Kasatkina and Putintseva had real chances to do so.

There was no huge movement inside the top 10, but don't look now, one of our GOATs moved up 10 places and now sits inside the top 20 - Slice For The Win (Florian) - and is now within 600 points!.  Everyone has been warned.  Watch your back!

GW20 RESULTS

I'm not sure whats tougher for the week after Wimbledon -  for the players trying to acclimate to a different surface, or for the FTL Managers who are trying to have enough players for the week after the extremely long list of players withdraw from their respective events.

The week after Wimbledon (GW20) is a strange week to be honest, as there are a large number of clay court players that would like to pretend that the grass court season doesn't exist and don't bother to put forth any effort to acclimate to the grass court surface, so they are eagerly awaiting this week, then there are the grass court specialists that aren't quite good enough to have a deep run at Wimbledon, but are plenty good enough to do incredibly well in NewPort.

 

I'd like to throw a huge kuddos to our 5 event winners - Andrey Rublev, Pedro Cachin, Adrian Mannarino, Qinwen Zheng, and Maria Timofeeva.

There was only player that reached the Quarter Finals of Wimbledon that even played this week - Rublev.  His victory this week was pretty amazing considering most people were truly surprised that he wasn't part of the long list of withdrawals.  He beat Alexander Zverev, Francisco Cerundolo  and Casper Ruud consecutively to close out the tournament.  His level of play on the dirt this season has been incredibly high and unless you are Alcaraz or Djoker, I don't think you are too eager to see him in your section.

Pedro Cachin's victory is something that not many people saw coming.  In fact, a total of 1 manager played him this week!.  Pedro had a rather auspicious start to his season as he lost 8 of his first 9 matches - which would have been really hard to swallow as most of those matches were near his home of Argentina.    His level has been improving as the season has gone on, but this was still a rather surprising victory - needless to say him beating the top seed in R1 (Roberto Bautista Agut) left many a critic shocked

Now Adrian Mannarino has LEGIT grass court skills and showed it off this week in NewPort.  IF not for a horrible draw in Wimbledon (Medvedev in R2), he probably has a deep run.  His level this week was virtually unmatched and should have won the event without losing a set - no one still knows what on earth happened in that 2nd set against Thompson where he led 5-1 and lost it lol.  Adrian beat a young American (Alex Michelsen) rather soundly in the final, but I promise you, it won't be the last time we hear from him!

Qinwen Zheng won her maiden WTA Tour level event this week in Palermo.  I'd argue that she was the most talented player in the draw - Kasatkina is ranked higher, but Qinwen's talents are hard to deny.  She entered the event having lost 5 of her past 6 matches, but sometimes ya have to accept the fact that the draw gods did her no favours and she's still not comfortable yet on the grass, so maybe this was a perfect time to change her fortunes. She had a couple of matches where her opponents looked like they didn't belong on the same court as her (Errani, Navarro), but her other 3 matches (Diane Parry, Mayar Sherif, and Jasmine Paolini) all went to a 3rd set and easily could have gone the other way.

 

Budapest looked like it was going to be won by 1 of 2 players when the Entry Lists came out, but once Anastasia Potapova decided that she needed some beach time and Bernarda Pera lost in R1, the event was anyone's ballgame.  If someone told me that a Russian teenage girl was going to win a tournament shortly after Wimbledon, I wouldn't have batted an eye as Mirra Andreeva is set to play in Lausanne this coming week and Belinda Bencic isnt playing.  Meanwhile Maria Timofeeva beat her to the punch this week!!  Maria lost in the final round of Qualifying to Siskova, but was able to get into the Main Draw as a Lucky Loser.  All she did after that was beat 5 solid players - Saville, Shnaider, Juvan, Podoroska and Baindl.  She nearly cut her ranking in half!!! (she's now up to 129 - was 246 coming into the event!!!)

In terms of FTL, this week was as close as it gets, as the final result wasn't decided until the final match of the week - Paolini vs Qinwen.  Referee (Asen)  had a 4 point lead over Nardismo (Andrea Russo) when the match started, but Nardismo had Jasmine Paolini.  Safe to say that if Qinwen won the match in straights, Referee had a real chance at winning the event.  Sadly, it wasnt meant to be and although Paolini lost, she accumulated 7+ points which was plenty enough for Nardismo to win the Game Week.

 

The top 12 managers had 1 thing in common - everyone had 2 winners!  Everyone had Rublev, and 11 managers had Mannarino, and 1 had Qinwen.

 

Nardismo's week was truly special as he both Rublev and Mannarino win titles, and had Casper Ruud and Jasmine Paolini reach the finals.  If Tommy Paul wins the 3rd set tiebreak against John Isner, he wins the Game Week rather comfortably to be honest.  He accumulated an incredible 414.8 points for the week.

Referee is probably just wondering what if to be honest.  He had Daria Kasatkina, and if she beats Jasmine Paolini, he wins the Game Week going away!!  On paper, Kasatkina should win the match, but lets face it, tennis isn't played on paper!

Overall leaderboard after Wimbledon

 Here is the top of the season leaderboard after Wimbledon

Its getting pretty congested at the top of the leaderboard and the race to be 2023 Champion is very much ON!  Just 300 points separate the top 10 which at this stage of the season is nothing. 

Wimbledon Champ  Dragan (Nadal's forehand) is the main mover this week rising 3 places to 5th position.

Robyn (Thanks But No Shanks) moves back into top spot  thanks to an excellent 6th place at Wimbledon but Muhammad Aoun Abbas is only 13 points back and 3rd place Nikhil is also very much in the chase after his 4th place Wimbledon finish.

There is still plenty game weeks to come so even if you are 1000 points at this stage, you can definitely pull that back with a few successful game weeks!

  

Wimbledon 2023

 Ladies and Gentlemen,

May I present to you our 2023 Wimbledon Champions 

 Novak  Carlos Alcaraz and Marketa Vondrousova

  

  

The one thing that seemed guaranteed before Wimbledon commenced was that Djokovic would hold the trophy aloft at the end of the fortnight breaking several more records in the process.  And Novak certainly looked the part throughout the event comfortably defeating Wawrinka, Hurkacz, Rublev and Sinner en route to the final, losing a total of 2 sets in the process. 

But the young Spanish No 1 Carlos Alcaraz continues to amaze the tennis world.  His title in Queens already suggested that he was starting to master the art of playing on grass and he proceeded to cruise through the draw in similar fashion to Novak defeating  Jarry, Berrettini, Rune and Medvedev with remarkable ease. 

So it was Carlos v Novak, No 1 v No 2, the young star against the veteran legend  and the match did live up to all the expectations.  It looked like the writing was on the wall when Novak won the 1st set 6-1 but Carlos hung in there to just edge the 2nd set tie break and pushed ahead to take the third.   Like a true champ Novak regrouped to take the 4th but the young Spaniard refused to accept the familiar Wimbledon narrative and outplayed Novak in the 5th to secure the title with some outstanding tennis.

Meanwhile in the women's event, the destination of the title seemed to be completely up in the air.  Would Iga Swiatek be able to adapt her game to find success on grass?  Her main rivals didn't seem to be in great shape with Elena Rybakina struggling to recover from the virus which had floored her at the French and Aryna Sabalenka bombing out of the Berlin grass court event early.

In the end the three women dubbed the "big three" of the WTA tour progressed through to the Quarter Finals quite comfortably and it seemed now likely that one of them would win the title.  But there were three other women who were to grab the headlines.  

Elina Svitolina, only just back from giving birth to her first child, had a remarkable run through to the Quarter Finals and stunned everyone when she knocked out Iga Swiatek to reach the semi finals. Last years beaten finalist Ons Jabeur who had looked out of sorts on the grass prior to Wimbledon  found that SW19 inspiration and started to believe once again, gaining her revenge against Rybakina in the Quarter Final and coming from behind to defeat Sabalenka in the semi final.

And last but not least there was the unheralded and unseeded Czech, Marketa Vondrousova who had quietly worked her way through the draw to reach the Quarter Finals where she produced a remarkable comeback to defeat Jessica Pegula.  She then went on to comfortably defeat an out of sorts Svitolina in the semi final.

So was this to be the realisation of the dream for Ons Jabeur. She started the final well against Marketa and seemed on course to win the Championship but Vondrousova proved to be a tenacious opponent and as nerves set in Ons began to lose her grip on the match and her confidence dipped as she went down rather easily to her Czech opponent.  Marketa was ultimately a very deserving champion!  

Congratulations to Dragan Josifoski (Nadal's forehand)  who is our Wimbledon FTL Champion.  Here is the final FTL table at the end of the Championships.

Dragan picked what turned out to be an outstanding team for Wimbledon in an event where one or two choices were going to make a big difference.   He had runner up Djokovic as Captain (as most of us did) and he had Champion Alcaraz as a KP  (as most of us did).  In fact 7 of this team were among the 9 most selected players for Wimbledon but the key selection was Ons Jabeur who for many was seen as a big gamble going into Wimbledon and only 27 people selected her but Dragan showed faith in her and that faith was rewarded handsomely as Ons powered her way to the final.

Here is Dragan's winning team.  I'll gloss over DH's Murray and Samsonova as they didn't really contribute to Dragan's success!

Emi Kotasz (Wonders of Igaland) was another Ons owner and ran Dragan very close finishing just 8.898 points behind.  The early loss of Tiafoe left her playing catch up for most of the fortnight but a good performance by DH Bublik kept her in the chase for the top spot until his loss to Rublev ended his run. (At least Bublik ended the Halle curse!)

Martin Poirieux (Martin Parpaing) was only 4 points further back. He had strong performances from his DHs Tommy Paul and  Vika Azarenka but perhaps it was the loss of Tsitsipas to the Wimbledon surprise package Chris Eubanks which scuppered his chances.  

And kudos must go to Nikhil Idnani(nbladeweilder)  who actually had a full squad of 10 players going into the 2nd week of Wimbledon with Shapovalov and Azarenka as DHs.  Unfortunately for Nikhil, his players then started to take out each other with Dimitrov losing to Rune and then Rune losing to Alcaraz and with no Ons on his team, his challenge for the game week started to fade. The upside is that a great game week has really bolstered his position in the overall league table.

Bhanu, Robyn, Mat, Dimitris, Frances and Florian make up the top 10.

Congratulations to all!