Monthly Standings for July

 Here are the top performers in the month of July which covered Game Week 19 thru to Game Week 22.

Congratutions to Mikhail (Roger That) on winning the month by just 8 points frrom Dragan. (Nadal's forehand)  Both had en excellent final week finishing in the top 10 but Mikhail managed to hold on to finally win the month by the narrowest of margins.

Dragan had started this month the strongest with a 1st place finish in Game Week 19.  Consecutive 3rd place finishes for Craig (Over Served) in Game Weeks 20 and 21 put him in pole position going into the final game week but he missed out due to a 35th place finish in Game Week 22.

Ultimately, Mikhail was the most consistent performer throughout the month managing a top 20 finish in all 4 game weeks!

Game Week 22 Results

 Here are all the champions from Game Week 22

It was a timely return to form for Stefanos Tsitsipas in Mexico.  Having failed to take a set in his last 5 finals (including the AO defeat to Djokovic), he managed to secure the Los Cabos title, his first trophy since the Mallorca title in June 2022.  It was a great week too for Alex De Minaur who finished runner up.

And it was a very unexpected return to form for Dan Evans in Washington.  Evans by his own admission has been on a lousy run of late but he was inspired this week and managed to come through a tough double header against Shevchenko and Tiafoe on the Friday before defeating Dimitrov and the impressive Griekspoor in the final. 

The women's title in Washington was to go to Coco Gauff who entered the tournament with a new coaching team this week with Brad Gilbert mentoring. She definitely had a lot more confidence and swagger about her this week and the forehand was no longer as vulnerable looking as it has looked for the large part of this season.  It was a good week too for Maria Sakkari who came through some tough battles  to reach the final but she was understandably disappointed not to add to the Rabat title that remains her only triumph to date.

The weather in Prague made the tournament a bit chaotic with the 2nd semi final having to be completed on the Monday before the final could even be played.  After coming through a tough match against Ankita Raina,  Linda Noskova made short work of her next 2 opponents and it appeared she was odds on to win a home title.  Nao Hibino had other ideas however and after finishing off a semi final over Jacquelin Cristian, she managed to defeat an out of sorts Noskova in the final - perhaps Linda was thinking about that missed flight to Canada.   Hibino managed to secure the doubles title as well so a good week for her.

And finally - what a great week for Sebastian Baez in Kitzbuhel as he defeated home favourite Dominic Thiem to secure his second clay title of 2023. He told Dominic what an inspiration he had been and said he hoped Dominic would play better in the next tournament.  😂  We knew what you meant Seb!  

So here is the final FTL table for Game Week 22

Congrats to Adnan (Advantage Infinity) on the game week win.  Adnan just managed to beat Sebastian (Phenomenadal)  by 3.215 points with James (fighting fantasies) just 14 points further back in 3rd place. 

 

Here is Adnan's winning team

Adnan had two winners in Coco Gauff (Washington) and Stefanos Tsitsipas (Los Cabos) as well as two runners up  in Alex De Minaur (Los Cabos) and Dominic Thiem (Kitzbuhel).  Otherwise the rest of his team delivered decent results with the exception of Hurkacz who was a 1st Round casualty. 

Sebastian's team was pretty strong too and deserves to be highlighted

Congrats to Adnan and Sebastian and all 8 teams who broke 400 in what proved to be a tricky game week to prepare for!

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!