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!

  

Season Leaderboard thru Game Week 18

 

For some time now we have been used to the triumvirate of Robyn, Muhammad and Tricia dominating the season leaderboard but Game Week 18 has shaken things up a little and its becoming a lot more congested as we moved into Wimbledon.

Here is the season Leaderboard after Game Week 18

The biggest winner this week was Muhammad Aoun Abbas who's 5th place finish and score of 274 points was enough to see him overhaul Robyn at the top of the leaderboard.  Robyn, to be blunt, had a shocker with only 111 points.

Tricia who had been in 3rd place had an average game week in 56th position on 186 points but it was not enough to fend off the chasing pack as both Nikhil (240 points) and Silvi (250 points) passed her by to move into 4th and 5th respectively. 

Soklian's game week win moved her up 9 places to 70th in the Level 1 Leaderboard.   

As we prepare for Wimbledon, the top 10 are separated by 300 points and with big points on offer at SW19  we could see some significant changes in the overall Leaderboard.  

Game Week 18 Results

I think its fair to say that Game Week 18 was one of those Game Weeks which could quickly be abandoned in the scrap heap.  Even before the tournaments began, the withdrawal list had left many of us with half a team  (Rybakina, Vekic, Bublik, De Minaur and Sakkari were all among the pre tournament withdrawals - a familiar occurrence in a pre slam week)

The big name players that did survive the cull didn't fare much better.  Iga at least managed 3 wins before succumbing to illness prior to her semi final.  Most of the other highly owned participants - (Fritz, Tsitsipas, Haddad Maia, Jabeur) were all early casualties putting a big question mark on their Wimbledon chances.

So at the end of the week we ended up with 4 fairly unexpected finals.  In Eastbourne, Madison Keys (0 owners) won the women's event over Daria Kasatkina (7 initial owners) and in the men's event Cerundolo (8 owners) won his 2nd ATP title and became the first Argentinian to win a grass court event since 1995. Runner up Tommy Paul  was the most owned of the finalists with 28 owners.

It was a first career title for Chris Eubanks  (1 owner) in Mallorca defeating the ever reliable grass stalwart  Adrian Mannarino (18 owners) in the final.  And Katerina Siniakova (2 owners) took the title in Bad Homburg defeating Lucia Bronzetti (1 owner but also crucially 1 ER).

In a game week like this it doesn't take a massive total to finish top of the pops and the winning score of 306.41 was the lowest winning weekly score of the season so far but in the circumstances a darn good total in a tough game week in which most of us failed to break 200 and some of us (including me) failed to break into triple figures. 😄

Massive congrats to Soklian who made the most of a chaotic week.  Here is the final game week table. Congrats also to Harry who is the Level 2 weekly winner.  Great weeks also for Elin, Laurie and also Muhammed who's 5th place propelled him to the top the season leaderboard.

If you manged a finalist this week you were doing well, if you managed TWO like Soklian and Harry, it was enough to win the game week.   Soklian had Eastbourne runner up Tommy Paul as a KP and also Bad Homburg runner up Lucia Bronzetti coming in as an ER for Vekic.  She also had decent returns from Captain Iga and KP Liudmila Samsonova. Here is Soklian's winning team

Here is Harry's team.  Harry ran Soklian pretty close in the end.  He had Eastbourne Champion Cerundolo and Mallorca runner up Mannarino.  Congrats Harry.

WIMBLEDON - DRAWS AND DARK HORSE

 Wimbledon is less than a week away, and the Draws are coming together.  Then again as GameWeek 17 came to a close (thankfully for many of us lol), the Player Prices are locked in for Wimbledon.  As a result, the list of players that are available to be chosen as a Dark Horse is also set in stone.

I have provided a link Wimbledon Draws that everyone can access.  I will be updating the information as it becomes readily available.  The Womens Qualifying Draw should be available tomorrow.   The Main Draws will be available in the next couple of days as well.

For those that want to create a copy of the sheet, Click on FILE, and scroll down to MAKE A COPY. 

Season Leaderboard - thru Game Week 17

 

Here is the season leaderboard after Game Week 17.

Robyn (Thanks But No Shanks) further consolidated her position as the top of the leaderboard with a 29th placed finish, which was 50 points clear of 2nd placed Aoun and 80 points clear of 3rd place Tricia.  Interestingly both Robyn and Aoun left runners up Vekic and De Minaur on the bench this week and Tricia was left to rue picking Jabeur as her Captain for the week.

Moving on up is Nikhil (nbladeweilder) who moved up 2 places to 4th place thanks to an impressive score of 395 points and Anthony (Alcarazian Domination) moves up 3 places to 7th. 

Game Week 17

Game Week 17 wasn't quite as chaotic as the previous game week but we still saw plenty of surprises (particularly in the German events)  which ultimately scuppered the hopes of many FTL teams. 

In Halle there were early exits for Tsitsipas, Medvedev and Sinner (due to retirement) which must cast some doubt on their Wimbledon credentials.

In Berlin, there were early exits for last years Wimbledon Champ Elena Rybakina (2nd Round to Vekic) and Ons Jabeur (1st Round to Niemeier) as well as highly favoured Aryna Sabalenka (2nd Round to Kudermetova)

However the game week also witnessed some established grass court stars and one all court superstar showing their credentials on the green stuff.

Carlos Alcaraz is a quick learner and after a tricky opener against Rinderknech at Queens, he just got better and better on the surface despatching some serious grass court talent in the process of winning the title (Dimitrov, Korda and De Minaur).  

Sascha Bublik is another one of those players where you never know what you will get and it was not long ago that he was guilty of an expletive ridden rant in Russian where he pretty much questioned why he was even bothering to train.  This week he was immaculate especially against Zverev in the semi final and against Rublev in the final.  With that serve he can be a serious threat at Wimbledon but don't forget the Halle curse.  Unless your name is Fedeer, the winner invariably loses in the 1st Round at SW19!

In Berlin, Czech veteran and queen of grass Petra Kvitova  pulled off another tournament win in what is turning out to be a pretty good year for her having already won a trophy in Miami.  She took out Garcia and Alexandrova before seeing off a spirited challenge from Vekic in the final.

And finally Jelena Ostapenko took the title in Birmingham against Barbora Krejcikova.  Jelena had to battle through several 3 set epics this week including a tough win over a rejuvenated Venus Williams and a quite remarkable comeback from a set and 0-4 down against Magdalena Frech.  

And so to the FTL contest for this gameweek.  

Here is the final leaderboard

The battle for game week bragging rights was ultimately contested by 2 teams from our free to enter Global League.  

And it was Jelena Ostapenko that not only won the title in Birmingham but also just managed to pip Antonela by 3 points to clinch the FTL game week with a total of 485.85 points. 

You may recall that Jelena assisted us with the pre season FTL promotional campaign and was also persuaded to enter a team with the proviso that she be allowed to make herself Captain whenever she was playing.  That strategy paid off handsomely this week.  

Here is Jelena's winning team. She had two game week winners (herself and Alcaraz) and two runners up in Rublev and Krejcikova.

  

When interviewed about her win, Jelena said "I won because my grass court knowledge is better than everyone else and in fact I would have won by more if my mum had reminded me that Maria and Donna were playing in Berlin"

Massive kudos to Antonela Vukojevic on a terrific game week.  Here is Antonela's side.  She actually only had 7 active players and could have won the game week if Donna Vekic had even just taken the 2nd set against Petra- a set where she was a break up but ultimately lost in a high quality tie break.

But of course the game week prize always goes to a level 2 participant and this week that was the legend that is Vlad Zuperman with his team Rafa. Vlad finished the game week with 467 points.  He had Queens winner Carlos Alcaraz as his Captain and Halle runner-Up Rublev as a KP and also got decent points from Zverev, Sakkari and Rune.

Shout outs to Taylor Andrew, Jane Bruce and Cainim Truax who finished in 4th, 5th and 6th respectively.  Taylor's is a tale of what might have been as he unfortunately left the Halle champ on the bench.  :(   We've all been there!