There has been a change to the FTL Calendar. The Shanghai Masters has been moved from Game Week 30 to Game Week 31, as a result, there will be a single event in GW30 - Beijing Masters (WTA).
It was decided that starting this season the Shanghai Masters will be played over 11 days instead of 7, as a result, the event would start on Wednesday and would end up being played over both GW30 and GW31. So after much thought and discussion, this was the best possible option.
We've reached that part of the season where most of the top teams have built up a decent budget and are able to field a killer team for the Masters and Slam weeks. You know the line-up - Captain - Alcaraz, KPs Swiatek, Medvedev, Sabalenka etc. etc.
But it's precisely those types of week that FTL likes to deliver...
The mayhem started early with Rune, Tsitsipas, Zverev and Rublev all losing in the 2nd Round. Zverev was destroyed by an inspired Davidovich Fokina who went on to defeat Ruud and McDonald in his run to the semi final while Tsitsipas lost out to Gael Monfils who was rolling back the years in an impressive run to the Quarter Finals.
And the carnage continued in the Quarter Finals with Tommy Paul putting an excellent performance to oust a misfiring Carlos Alcaraz and Alex De Minaur (who is arguably having the best season of his career) ousting no 2 seed Daniil Medvedev.
So that left us with an unexpected semi final line-up of Jannik Sinner against Tommy Paul and Alex de Minaur against ADF. Sinner and de Minaur comfortably won their semi finals and Sinner cruised past De Minaur in the final to win his first Masters. So, despite all the chaos, we did at least have a highly owned player lifting the trophy at the end of the week
The women's event wasn't quite as chaotic as most of the top seeds went deep. No 2 seed Sabalenka was the only significant early casualty as she went out in the third round to Luidmila Samsonova who would go on to reach the final.
Top seed Iga Swiatek was not at her best in Montreal but still managed to battle her way to the semi final where remarkably she lost her serve 11 times in a 3 set defeat to Jessica Pegula
Unfortunately, the rain and poor scheduling played havoc with the women's event. Rybakina won a three set thriller to edge past Kasastkina in the Quarter Final and set up a semi final with Samsonova but this tie had to be rescheduled due to the rain meaning that the remaining semi final had to be played on the same day as the final.
Samsonova won the semi against an understandably tired Rybakina but she couldn't perform at her best in the final and Pegula took full advantage with a flawless performance to secure her 2nd Masters title. Pegula was a key differential this week for the 53 teams that had her.
Here is the final table for the Canada game week.
The key to success this week was having Jess Pegula in your team (she featured in the top 9 teams) and also having Luidmila Samsonova as your dark horse. (Samonova was DH for 4 of the top 5 teams).
Mateusz Mikolajczak (< >< v2) had both Pegula (as a KP) and Samsonova (as a DH) as well has having men's champion Sinner. Massive congrats to Mateusz who's score of 615.688 put him 15 points clear of Samir Kadric (Mirzini Sinovi) in 2nd place with Graham Metcalfe (Metty's Marvels) finishing 3rd on 578 points.
Here is how the two top teams lined up. Mateusz putting Pegula ahead of Iga and Aryna as a KP proved to be an inspired decision!
I have attached the Cincinnati 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 CINCI OPEN in order to access it. If you want to create a copy, Click on FILE, Scroll down to CREATE A COPY.
Plz note that there are a large number of players in the Womens draw that have been out a significant period of time or got hurt in Montreal, so there could be some drastic changes to the Draw before the first ball is played.
