I have attached the FTL Version of the Indian Wells Draws (both Mens and Womens), and the Dark Horse Breakdown. If you want a copy, click on the link, IW DRAWS. One you do so, click on FILE, and scroll to MAKE A COPY, and call it whatever you want
Good Luck :)
As we approach the sunshine double we are seeing quite a few players starting to make a name for themselves on the tennis circiut.
None more so than the new power couple in tennis. No - not Tsitsidosa and not Mr and Mrs Monfils but rather Alex De Minaur and Katie Boulter who are winning tournaments, reaching career high rankings and playing themselves into consideration for FTL team selection.
De Minaur's is establishing himself as a top 10 player this year and has already notched up wins over Djokovic, Fritz, Zverev, Rublev and Dimitrov in 2024. He came up just short to Sinner in Rotterdam but in Los Cabos he continued his great form beating Tsitspas, Draper and Ruud to win the title.
After winning the title in Mexico, Alex jetted straight to San Diego to watch Katie play the final there against Marta Kostyuk. Katie played her best tennis throughout the event and her opponents just could not cope with her big hitting. She wasn't quite firing in the final as she lost the first set to Martha but she quickly turned it around to win her first 500 title to add to the 250 she won in the UK last year. Katie has now broken into the top 32 and should find herself seeding for the French Open and Wimbledon if she keeps up this form.
Talking about form players, its been great to see Ugo Humbert playing at his best again. We all know he has great potential and if he steers clear of injury he can really make a mark this year. His coach Jeremy Chardy felt that conditions in Dubai would be perfect for his game and so it proved as he saw off veterans Monfils amd Murray before scoring impressive wins over Hurkacz and Medvedev en route to a final with Sascha Bublik. Bublik himself is having a good season but was a tad fortunate to benefit from the disqualification of Andrey Rublev for poor behaviour at the tale end of a very close match, Humbert prevailed in the final as he tends to do. He is now 6-0 in ATP Finals.
And then there is Sebastian Baez who has really mopped up on the South American clay following up his win in Rio with the title in Santiago beating home favourite Tabilo in the final. Baez had 52 owners this week and I suspect he will be a popular pick during the European clay season too.
The WTA event in Austin was contested by two Chinese players. Yue Yuan had already defeated compatriot Yafan Wang in the quarter finals and she followed up a semi final win over Schmiedlova by beating Xiyu Wang in the final. She moves up to 46 in the live rankings which makes her the 3rd highest ranked of the 7 Chinese players in the top 100. This is her first WTA title having been runner up to Jessica Pegula in Korea towards the end of last year.
Here is the FTL table for Game Week 6
Congrats to Ellen on a terrific week. evlkstennis24 topped the charts with an excellent 515.1 points. She was almost 30 points ahead of the chasing pack. Abhishek Puranik Puranik (Foot Fault) took 2nd place on 486 points and Sara Skinner (Ball Bandits) took 3rd place on 482 points.
Here is the head to head stats between Ellen and Abhishek
Ellen had players in 4 of the 5 finals. She had Los Cabos winner De Minaur in her side along with three of the runner ups - Kostyuk (San Diego), Bublik (Dubai) and Tabilo (Santiago). There were decent totals also from Rublev, Pegula and Rune.
Many of the top tier managers don't worry too much about the Overall Standings in the first few weeks of the year as they are taking a long term approach to the season, and realize that as long as they are able to continue to increase their salary cap, while being within striking distance, they are in great shape. Sadly, when you look at the very top of the Overall Leaderboard, it gives you a rather ominous feel if you got off to a slow start as we have the 2022 Winner (Alexei - Panthers4Life), the 2023 Winner (Aoun - Fedex Superstars) sitting well inside our top 10, and Mohaib (Dr. peRFect) leading the way. Everyone knows how dangerous Mohaib can be, so you best not get too far behind him!
Lets take a look at how the top 5 managers did this week.
After a tough 5th GameWeek, Mohaib (Dr. peRFect) had a great 6th GameWeek as he finished in 6th as he amassed an incredible 446.1 points. He jumped from 3rd place to the lead as he's accumulated 2656.334 points for the season. He had De Minaur win and had Xiyu and Tabilo make the final. If not for the absolute insanity in the Dubai SemiFinals, he might have even had a better week - he had both Medvedev and Rublev.. His team suffered just 1 Round 1 loss (Tommy Paul)
Andrea Russo (Sinner Circle 24) dropped 1 spot this week as he finished 76th. He lost 125 points to our new leader this week, and is now 61.5 points behind for the season. Sadly, his team Looked Great on Paper, but only Baez made a final for his team. Vekic and Collins looked like inspired picks but both only won 2 rounds. His team suffered 1 Round 1 loss (Taylor Fritz)
Taylor (Stripes VII) dropped 1 spot this week as he finished 61st. He lost 105 points to our new leader and sits 97.2 points behind for the season. He had both finalists in Santiago. Sadly Acapulco wasn't quite as kind to Taylor as he suffered 2 Round 1 losses there - Zverev and Thompson
Akiko (Wimbyfan) moved up 3 places as she finished 33rd. Sadly, she still lost 73 points to our new leader and sits 109.7 points behind our leader. I'm sure she'll take some consolation to the fact that she gained ground on both Andrea and Taylor! She had the winner in both Santiago and Acapulco. Sadly, its an uphill battle when your Captain (Zverev), loses in Round 1.
Mateusz (<><v3.) had a sensational week as he moved up 12 spots thanks to a 7th place finish. He did lose 1.9 points to our new leader, but he did gain 120+ points on our previous leader! He's 130 points back of the overall lead. He had both Baez and De Minaur win their respective events, and had Kostyuk lose in the finals. If his Captain doesn't get Disqualified, he could have had an even better week. Taylor Fritz was his sole Round 1 loss.
Vinay (Buttercups) won the 2nd month of the season, and is now up to 14th. He had 2 Round 1 losses (Zverev and Paul) and it still didn't matter! It sure helps when you have Baez and Boulter win titles, and have Ruud make the final.
I've always had the belief that you will have a better idea of where you stand after the results of the Sunshine Double come in, so it will be real interesting to see what the Overall Leaderboard looks like in a months time! Its a safe bet that the Dark Horse selection for both Indian Wells and Miami will be of the uptmost importance - never forget that Kalinskaya made the final in Dubai as a Dark Horse just a couple of weeks ago! So be careful of those selections!
Here are the overall standings after GW5
Another week of FTL and another week when most of us were left scratching our heads in disbelief as our carefully curated teams crashed and burned in spectacular fashion. The remainder of this blog will try to piece together and attempt to explain what exactly happened as FTL Carnage struck again.
I know what you're saying - "Change the tune Jer - you go on about FTL carnage every single week"
but... I mean..... look at the winners this week...
ok, ok - Karen was a decent shout to win Doha and Sebastian is always excellent on clay but if anyone had two or more of this quartet in their team then they should consider pursuing a career as a clairvoyant. But lets try and make a bit of sense of it all.
We begin with the WTA 1000 event in Dubai.
The Australian Open Champion Aryna Sabalenka returned to the fray and was promptly skittled out in the 1st Round by her nemesis - Donna Vekic. 💣 (Those familiar with the H2H may have seen this coming)
Elena Rybakina's terrific run eventually caught up with her and she had to withdraw from her Quarter Final match against Jasmine Paolini 💣
But perhaps the chief havoc maker this week was Anna Kalinskaya who came through qualifying and went on to take out:
Jelena Ostapenko (at least we can stop talking about the Vika jinx now) 💣
&
US Open Champ Coco Gauff in the Quarter Finals 💣
&
World No 1 and French Open champ Iga Swiatek in the semi finals 💣
Paolini had carried off a couple of upsets on her own en route to the final including a remarkable come back against Haddad Maia in Round 1 and she needed those fighting skills again in the final against Kalinskaya where she was a set down and a break down in the both sets 2 and 3.
Both Jasmine and Anna have shot up the rankings after their efforts this week and its very well deserved. It will be interesting to see what these two can achieve this year.
The South American swing continued to surprise us. Last year Cam Norrie and Carlos Alcaraz dominated the swing, contesting both the finals in Buenos Aires and Rio and seemed a safe pick for FTLers who could afford them both. After surprise defeats in Argentina we expected both to bounce back but injury struck Carlos 💣 after only a few points of his opening match in Rio and illness got the better of Cam Norrie 💣 as he went down rather meekly to surprise package Mariano Navone.
Navone was no match for Baez in the final however as Sebastian secured his 5th ATP title and his first at 500 level.
The story of the week in Doha was 18 years old Jakub Mensik who apparently only took up the offer to play at the event on the promise of a free I-Pad! But he took the opportunity to show everyone why there is so much hype around him by taking out veterans Murray and Monfils and also tournament favourite Andy Rublev 💣 in some style.
Khachanov always looked a good bet to come through his half of the draw and he finally managed to tame the young Czech but it took an epic first set tie break to finally break his resistance. A pretty decent week for Karen who went through the event without dropping a set.
And finally to Los Cabos where the big names in attendance seemed to be bucking the trend of carnage happening elsewhere in the tennis world. Tsitsipas, Ruud and Zverev all started their week with dominant performances and ultimately managed to progress to the semi finals without too much problem.
But the other semi finalist had other ideas....
Jordan Thompson is playing some of the best tennis of his career at the moment but had looked down and out against the American Alex Michelsen but somehow he survived and boy did he take advantage of this reprieve, Jordan not only took out Alexander Zverev in the semi finals💣 but then went to win the final in straight sets against Casper Ruud 💣
Congrats to Jordan - 1st career title at the age of 29 and he did it in some style.
It seems that some of you FTLers do know your stuff because:
Jordan Thompson had 21 owners (with 4 at KP)
Karen Khachanov had 23 owners
Sebastian Baez had 45 owners
Anna Kalinskaya had 26 owners (13 at DH)
but Jasmine Paolini just had 2 owners (kudos to the 2 who had her!)
So, over to the game week winners and in a way we had three winners this week.
The level 2 weekly prize winner is Bhanu (Austin 3:16) . Bhanu had 2 champions in Khachanov and Baez as well as Dubai runner up Anna Kalinskaya and he amassed an impressive total of 417.18 points. Congrats Bhanu!
The level 1 winner is Olya Tolstova who had champions Sebastian Baez and Jordan Thompson in her team and also accrued decent points from KPs Zverev, Swiatek and Gauff as well as TP Pliskova and finished the game week with a total 431.46 points. Congrats Olya!
But does all the game week glory go to Bhanu and Olya?
"No I say!"
"That's not fair?" I hear you say!
"It is fair" I say - "in fact it's Christopher Fare!!!" (yes the whole blog was building up to this gag!)
Massive congrats to our Global League Player Christopher and his team "The Consistents" who absolutely romped the game week,
Here are the final Global Standings
Christopher had the 3 champions Khachanov, Thompson and Baez as his KPs and Dubai runner up Kalinskaya as his DH. That's what you call an outstanding week. His total was a ridiculous 522.57 points.
For sake of comparison, here is the H2H match up between Christopher and his nearest challenger Olya!
Give us a follow on Facebook and/or twitter if you read this Christopher! Well done!
More often than not, when you look at the Overall Standings early into the season, the thought process of 'thank god its a long season' tends to come to mind, and you don't worry too much as to who's at the top of the leaderboard. Hell most of us don't worry too too much about how far behind we are either (unless it gets really carried away), but every once in a while, there's someone at the top of it that changes that perspective!
Well here we are! Mohaib (Dr. peRFect) has long been one of the top managers in FTL, and him sitting at the top of the Overall Leaderboard with a 40+ point lead is rather concerning. Safe to say, you best not get too far behind Mohaib, as he's not going to help you out by missing a GW lockout or get himself into trouble by running out of trades. Safe bet, he's at the top and he'll be there or near that spot from this point forward!
Mohaib was 2nd entering the 4th GameWeek and thanks to a 6th place finish, he's got a 43.89 point lead. He's amassed 1984.59 points for the season thus far. He'll probably tell you that the week could have and should have been even better!! He made Pliskova his ER1, and him not playing her over Tabilo is something that shouldnt have ever happened. Meanwhile, he still had Sinner as his captain, and had 2 other finalists (Rybakina and Paul), and felt inspired and selected Naomi Osaka as his Dark Horse
Andrea Russo (Sinner Circle 24) moved up 2 places and now sits in 2nd. He finished 17th for the week, sadly he lost 36 points to our leader. Honestly, I'm sure he's wondering what more he has to do though, as he had 3 winners (Sinner, Swiatek and Fritz) this week lol.
Marc LLZR (Natere Dream Team) continues to sit in 3rd, but thanks to a 46th place finish, he dropped 78 points to our leader and now sits 84.59 points back. He had 2 winners (Fritz and Sinner, and a finalist (Rybakina) but a couple of Round 1 losses did him in.
Preston's (Machiavekic) inspired season continues as he moved up 2 spots and now sits in 4th. Sadly thanks to a 33rd place finish he lost 61 points to our leader and now sits 115 points back. Preston had a win (Sinner), and finalist (Rybakina) an inspired Dark Horse selection of Danielle Collins but also had 2 Round 1 losses - Haddad Maia and Kalinskaya.
Craig (Over Served) had a rough rough week, as he fell 4 spots from the lead and now sits in 5th.. He finished 105th for the week and lost a 139 points to our leader, and is currently 126 points behind. He had a win (Sinner) and a finalist (Rybakina), but its hard to accumulate many points when 4 of your players lose in Round 2.
Our Biggest mover in the top 20 was the Winner of 4th GW - Wayne Brown (Court and Spark). He moved up 31 places and now sits in 9th! Hard to imagine that with the win, he only picked up 10.1 points on our leader - He's now within 167.77 points
Huge congrats to our winners this week - Iga Swiatek, Jannik Sinner, Taylor Fritz and umm Facundo Diaz Acosta?!?! The first 3 winners were all top seeds, and then there's Facundo who required a MDWC to get into the field!
Iga Swiatek won the Masters 1000 event in Doha (for the 3rd straight time) in dominant fashion. She easily won her first 3 matches (Sorana Cirstea, Ekaterina Alexandrova and Victoria Aarenka), but when she reached the final, Elena Rybakina awaited her. Elena's game truly bothers Iga (beat her 3 times last year), so when Elena ran out to a 2 break 4-1 lead, ya had to wonder if Iga would finally lose in Doha. With Elena serving to up the lead to 5-1 in the first set, Elena cut her leg with her racquet and was forced to take a Medical Time Out. It wasn't a serious cut, but it changed the momentum, and after the 5 to 6 min break, Iga came out firing and the match turned on a dime. Elena had numerous chances to win the 1st set in the tiebreak, but in the end Iga came through, and quickly ran away in the 2nd set and closed her out in straight sets. Thanks to a walkover in the SemiFinal (against Karolina Pliskova), Iga played a total of 8 sets this week. She lost a total of 19 games this week - 8 of which were in the final. I guess the only question is can Iga continue this type of dominance going forward?!?!
Jannik Sinner won the 500 level event in Rotterdam. All he's done soo far this season is win! He's played 2 events and won both - Aussie Open and this week!! Honestly, he looked miles from his best all week, but it was plenty good enough. He beat Botic Van De Zandschulp, Gael Monfils, Milos Raonic (it might have gotten complicated, if Milos doesn't get hurt), Tallon Griekspoor, and Alex De Minaur. In 7 tries, De Minaur has never beaten him, but damn he played him tough this week. Jannik has had some sensational results at the Sunshine Double in the past, so the only real question is can he win both this year?!?!? It would be quite the start to the season if he does!
Taylor Fritz won the 250 level event in DelRay Beach (for the 2nd straight time) in dominant fashion (not Iga domination, but still lol). He won all 4 matches (Nuno Borges, Rinky Hijikata, Marcos Giron and Tommy Paul) in straight sets. Marcos and Tommy have had sensational US swings, but neither gave Taylor much of an issue. Not many ppl know this, but Taylor has now won his last 7 finals!
Facundo Diaz Acosta won the 250 level event in Buenos Aires. In an event that had Carlos Alcaraz, Facundo, who got in as a Main Draw Wild Card, did what no one else did this week - win 5 matches in straight sets! He came into the week ranked 87th, and after beating Daniel Altmaier, Francisco Cerundolo, Dusan Lajovic, Federico Coria and Nicolas Jarry, his ranking moved up to 59th! Facundo played one Main Draw ATP Tour Level match outside of South America last year, so it will be interesting to see his schedule going forward.
In terms of FTL, the 4th GameWeek highlighted the necessity of increased Salary Caps, and the importance of the Dark Horse Category. A manager would have needed 75mill + to have 6 of the Finalists this week (Swiatek, Rybakina, Sinner, De Minaur, Fritz and Paul) and there were 2 Semi Finalists (Pavlyuchenkova, and Pliskova) that were available to be selected as Dark Horses.
The 4th GameWeek is one of the closest results in recent memory as 5 managers were within 6.7 points!!!
Nikhil (nbladweilder) led for the entire week, but his lead entering the final match (Fritz vs Paul) was less than a couple of points, so it felt like a matter of time until he was caught. In the end Tommy Paul put up just enough points, and Nikhil finished second.
Wayne (Court and Spark) amassed 553.01 points for the week. He had Sinner as his Captain, and Swiatek as a KP. He also had both Rybakina and Paul make the finals. His inspired Dark Horse selection, Naomi Osaka, was probably the difference.
Nikhil (nbladeweilder), Andrea Lenox (San Clemente Aces), Andrew Doyle (A Slice of Distinction) and Goran (Bridgeburners) round out our top 5. Andrea is one of the 2 managers this week that played Facundo Diaz Acosta, and probably ends up winning GW4 if Lehecka manages to close out Hurkacz in the 3rd set tiebreak.
