Monthly Standings for March

 

Here are the monthly standings for March in level 2.

And here is a break down between the three game weeks. 

Congrats to Gord MacCabe  on winning the monthly title.  Unlike the other contenders he had no top 3 finishes in the game weeks this month but this was a reward for consistency across all game week. Gordon performed this best in the tricky week 9 with an 11th placed finish.

Game Week 9 results

 A busy game for FTLers which gave us the chance to test our squad depth at some lower tier events.

The only 500 level event this week was in Charleston which boasted a strong WTA lineup.  Jess Pegula's consistency over the last 2 months and her never say die attitude make her a must have for FTL teams.  A title in Austin and a final in Miami, she could be forgiven for feeling a bit jaded going into this event but once again she showed her dogged determination to - come back against reigning champ Collins after being blasted away in the 1st set -  to come through in three sets against  Alexandrova, a player who has had the better of her in the past -  and to run off a string of 6 games from 1-5 down in the 2nd set against Kenin to clinch the title. 

A popular trade in this week was Camilla Osorio and with good reason.  She just loves playing in front of her home fans in Colombia and had already won this title twice.  She very nearly came unstuck in her 2nd Round match against Emina Bektas but she dug deep to turn the match around and after that it was plain sailing against another Bogota champ Tatjana Maria in the quarters, Riera in the semi finals and surprise package Katerzyna Kawa in the final.

Jenson Brooksby's return to tennis has been well documented.  He served a lengthy ban from the game after failing to attend mandatory drug testing and his return was further complicated by injury. He has also spoken about his struggles with autism. When he emerged on the scene it was clear he had the talent and battling qualities to do well in the game and they were on display in Houston last week. Remarkably the quarter final lineup in Houston was an all American affair and Brooksby went on to beat Kovacevic, Tommy Paul and Frances Tiafoe to land a very well deserved title.

Flavio Cobolli took the first title of his career in Bucharest.  It has been a rough start to the season for Flavio and he was certainly not one of the favourites to win this title but he gradually found his rhythm as the tournament progressed.  In the final he faced Sebastian Baez (who continues to do well at lower tier clay events and had despatched reigning champ Fucsovics in the semi finals.) Coboli prevailed surprisingly easily 6-4, 6-2 in the final and is bound to take confidence for the rest of the clay swing.

And the ATP Tour also made a stop off in Africa this week at the Grand Prix Hassan in Marrakech.  And once again it was an Italian name on the trophy at the end of the week. Luciana Darderi defeated Tallon Griekspoor in 2 tie breaks to secure his 2nd ATP Title. Darderi dropped just one set all week (to Hugo Gaston.)

Here are the standings in the Global Leaderboard.

It was a remarkably tight contest this week with the top 5 teams separated by just 10 points.  Congrats to Tom Vaughan and his team "I like this Alex Bolt"  for managing to finish top of the tree.  Lets take a look at his lineup

Tom's captain Madison Keys didn't deliver but his KPs certainly did with both Jessica Pegula and Camila Osorio winning their respective events.  Tom also had a finalist in Frances Tiafoe but perhaps his key differential was Bucharest winner Flavio Cobolli.

The level 2 contest could not have been closer.  Anton's Amazing Team (Anton Gaydorov)  and Pimdebeer (Tom Grizzell)  were separated by the sum total of 0.43 points!!   Here is the head to head but its hardly worth disecting the differences when they finished so close.

Anton's key pick this week was undoubtedly putting Colombian Queen Camila Orosio as his Captain.  He also had Charleston winning Pegula and two runners up in Baez and Griekspoor.   Tom also had two winners in Cobolli and Pegula and the same two runners up.  Like i said, nothing between them, well exepct those 0.43 points which makes all the difference as its Anton who wins the weekly prize!  

Congrats Anton and Tom on a great week!

  

MONTECARLO DRAW (FTL VERSION) AND DARK HORSE BREAKDOWN

I have attached the MonteCarlo Main Draw (FTL Version) and the Dark Horse Breakdown.  The Qualifying hasn't started yet, and as a result the Qualifiers have yet to be placed.

 

Please note that the Qualifying should be completed before the start of the upcoming lockout.

 

Do not forget to select your Dark Horse.

 

If you want a copy, click on the link, MONTECARLO DRAWS Once you do so, click on FILE, and scroll to MAKE A COPY, and call it whatever you want

Good Luck :)

MIAMI RESULTS

I'd like to throw out a massive kuddos to our event winners this week - Aryna Sabalenka and Jakub Mensik.

 

I'd love to tell you that their victories were the main stories of the week, but it couldn't be further from the truth.  There were 2 stories that were far more prevalent.

 

1.  Alexandra Eala

2.  The state of the mens top 10

 

First things first.  Aryna may have been dominant, but Alexandra Eala was THE STORY of the womens event.   She's received nothing but hate over the past few years about her continuously receiving undeserving MDWC's in incredibly high level events, and its hard to pretend that the hate didn't feel warranted - It was hard to remember her ever being competitive in one of those matches.  Meanwhile, all she did this week was beat 3 Grand Slam Champions (Jelena Ostapenko, Madison Keys, and Iga Swiatek) and make the SEMIFINAL!!  She may have lost the Semi to Jessica Pegula, but it wasn't for lack of effort, nor was it for the match being noncompetitive!  In fact, she had the first set on her racquet and felt like the better player for most of the 3rd against Jess.  Most analysts believed that her match with Jessica was the match of the tournament.  

For those that have never seen Eala play, she's nothing like you would expect.  Alexandra is a lefty and is diminutive in stature, but is incredibly aggressive.  Her serve needs some serious work, but she takes the ball early, and has zero issue changing the direction of the ball and putting her opponent under pressure.  It was shocking to see how many 50-50 rally balls that she was involved with against Pegula and Swiatek, where it felt like she was the one that was in control.  When she beat Swiatek in straight sets, Swiatek didn't have her best day, but she wasn't horrible and although she served over 65% first serve, she still only managed to hold serve twice in the entire match thanks to Eala's incredibly aggressive play.

Meanwhile, the top of the mens game is a tough tough watch.  Jannik Sinner has played in 1 event all season (the Aussie Open) and STILL leads the ATP Race!  Shaky play and early exits is how you would describe the top of the mens tour right now.  In Miami this type of form continued as Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev, Jack Draper and Andrey Rublev lost their first match of the week.  Somehow it didn't get much better either as Stefanos Tsitsipas, Casper Ruud, Alexander Zverev, and Alex De Minaur all lost early as well! Taylor Fritz lost in the Semi's to the eventual winner (which he's now done 3 times in his past 4 events!) but hasn't looked anywhere close to a top 4 player like his ranking would suggest!, and Novak Djokovic lost in the Finals but never beat a single player that wasn't either one of his pigeons or would be described as someone that belongs on the same court as him.  Honestly, it was rather shocking to see Novak not take advantage of a player looking for his first title of his career in such a huge match!

 

Now lets discuss Aryna Sabalenka.  Her victory this week was the definition of dominance!   She beat 3 top 10 players (Jessica Pegula, Jasmine Paolini, Qinwen Zheng) and the defending Champion (Danielle Collins) and never lost a set all week.  The only question coming into the final was if she was going to lose in the final for the 3rd time this season (Madison Keys at the AO and Mirra Andreeva at the IW), but Aryna was truly amazing in the final against Jess.  Its hard to pretend that Jessica hadn't played 3+ more hours of tennis than Aryna had before the final started, so she was truly on her last legs, but considering Aryna's level, I don't think it mattered.  Jessica has now lost to Aryna in 3 massive Hard Court finals (Cincinnati, US Open and Miami) in the past 6 months!  Safe to say that Jessica is going to have to go back to the drawing board and figure out a different game plan for the next time they face off!  Meanwhile, Aryna's dominance this week helped increase the gap in her ranking to 3000+ points ahead of Iga Swiatek!  Iga's got 4000+ points to defend from not until the French Open, so this gap could actually increase!

 

Somehow lost in the shuffle this season even after his win is Jakub Mensik.   Many an analyst have been incredibly high on him for the past year, but Joao Fonseca's crazy peak level has put some serious shade on his hype train!  Hell both players were involved in the nextgen finals in December and Fonseca came out on the right side of a 5 set war between the 2!  To make matters worse, he really struggled to win tiebreaks that week (losing 7 of them!) and lost all 3 of his matches (pretty damn good list of players btw - Arthur Fils, Learner Tien)  Coming into this week, his hype continued to dwindle as he's struggled for the vast majority of the season - he'd only made the R16 once all year!  But when you are 19 and you have all the talent in the world, all it takes is 1 good week to remind everyone that the sky is the ceiling!  All he did this week was beat 3 top 10 players (Novak Djokovic, Taylor Fritz, Jack Draper) and get revenge over Arthur Fils on the way to his first title of his career!!  On the way to the title he showed that he wasn't scared of the tiebreak lol, as he won all 7 of them that he played!!!  Whats crazy about this result is that when the match was over, the discussion wasn't about how good Jakub was, but instead did Djoker really just lose this match?  Last year, Jakub looked like he had top 10 potential and after this win, his ranking is now inside the top 25, so I think its a safe bet that this won't be the last time we hear from him this year.  I'm curious to see how he fares on the dirt!

 

In terms of FTL, I'd like to give massive kuddos to our winner - Michael Blomer (ThunderTurkeys). He amassed an incredible 625.95 points

 

Michael won the week by a little over 8 points, which takes some doing when your Womens Dark Horse loses in Round 1!  He had both Womens Finalists and had Fritz make the Semi's to makeup for that issue.  His selection of Grigor Dimitrov as his Dark Horse helped make up for the Round 1 loss by his KP (Carlos Alcaraz).  As a result of this week, he's now taken over the lead for March.  Can he close the job done and close the door?  (its less than 4 points, so it won't be easy)

 

Vlad (Rafa) finished a close second and I'm sure he's just wondering what could/should have been as he had bad losses by Alexander Zverev, and Stefanos Tsitsipas

 

I'd like to give a shoutout for the rest of our Top 5 for the week.

 

3rd.  Taylor - Stripes VIII

4th.   Ceprin - АльфА

5th.  Mike Hunt - No AO No Problem

 

 

 

Game Week 9 Draws

 HOUSTON

 MARRAKECH

BUCHAREST

CHARLESTON

 

 

 

BOGOTA

 

 

 

Game Week 7 results

 

Two tennis players announced themselves at the very top of the game in Indian Wells.  

Mirra Andreeva proved her WTA 1000 in Dubai was no fluke by picking up her 2nd consecutive title at this level beating some of the top players in the world in the process.

It was a first ATP 1000 title for Jack Draper who had a terrific week in Indian Wells and is beginning to look like a player who really can compete at the very top of the game for years to come.

Both players are now firmly established in the top 10 and the question now is whether they can do it at the Grand Slams. For Mirra, who has just turned 18, success at the slams seems inevitable.   Jack has had physical issues at the slams in the past but seems to be managing his schedule better and looks ready for the task at hand - he will definitely be a contender for the Wimbledon title but breaking the dominance of Sinner and Alcaraz at slam level will not be easy.

Remarkably, Mirra's route to the final was almost identical to the path tread by Madison Keys at the Australian Open.  Like Maddie she defeated Rybakina in the last 16, Svitolina in the Quarter Final,  Iga Swiatek in the semi final to reach a final against the same opponent Madison played in Melbourne -  Aryna Sabalenka.

Talking of Madison, the tennis world were keen to see how she would follow up her Australian Open success. She had another excellent week including a demolition of Belinda Bencic for the lost of just two games in the quarter finals.  Her semi final opponent was Sabalenka and it was almost as if Aryna had been waiting patiently for her chance to exact a brutal revenge for the Aussie Open final. Sabalenka defeated Keys 6-0, 6-1. A beat down!

On the men's side, the no 1 seed Zverev continued his poor run of form with an almost predictable defeat to Griekspoor in his opening match. Daniil Medvedev who traditionally does well at the Sunshine Double was looking strong as he progressed through the draw to set up a semi final with Holger Rune but the Dane put in a splendid performance to make the final.

Meanwhile Jack Draper was progressing impressively through the draw comfortably seeing off a trio of Americans in Brooksby, Fritz and Shelton to set up a semi final with Alcaraz.

Mirra Mirra on the Wall

The semi final with Carlos Alcaraz was an odd affair.  Alcaraz was strangely out of sorts and Draper powered to the first set 6-1.  It was almost as if the realisation of what he was about to do suddenly got to Draper as his energy and level fell of a cliff in the 2nd set with Alcaraz inflicting a bagel.  Draper later told an interviewer that he took himself off to the bathroom and looked at himself in a mirror telling himself to not let this opportunity pass him by.  He came out for the third set reinvigorated and took it 6-4 to set up a final with Holger Rune.

The bathroom mirror apparently had a part to play in the women's final as well.  After being swept aside in the first set, Mirra returned from her bathroom break with more focus and intent to turn around her match and defeat Sabalenka 2-6, 6-4, 6-3 playing some breathtaking tennis in the process.  

The men's final was a more straighforward affair as Draper made the most of his opportunity to sweep aside Rune in a surprisingly one sided contest.  6-2, 6-2.

And so to FTL.  Here are the global league standings for the Game Week.

Congratulations to Courtcowboy who topped the Global League Standings for this week with an impressive score of 679 points.   Lets take a look at the top two teams in the global league first.

Courtcowboy and Israel had the two eventual winners (Draper and Andreeva)  as Team Players. Phillipe also had semi finalists Keys and Alcaraz while Israel had Alcaraz, Medvedev and Swiatek. Courtcowboy had the stronger overall team with solid performances from all his players while Israel had a few weak links in Tien and the two dark horses who both lost their opening match,

But its Level 2 where the prizes are at so lets take a look at the two top teams in level 2.

This ended up being a remarkably close contest between Rydal 250 Sponsors Exemption and Surprise Surprise with Rydal just edging the chase by less than 2 points. Both had the WTA finalists in Andreeva and Sabalenka and men's semi finalist Alcaraz.  Rydal had two further semi finalists in Medvedev and Swiatek which compensated for the poor performaces by KP Zverev and TP Tien.  Its tricky to pinpoint the difference in such a close contest. Surprise Surprise had a solid starting 8 but perhaps the disappointing Dark Horse picks were the difference between being runner up and winning the game week.   Nevertheless a great week by both.  Congrats guys.

  

GAME WEEK 5 RESULTS

ATP 

Rio de Janeiro      Sebastian Baez beat Alexandre Muller   6-2, 6-3

Doha                    Andrey Rublev beat Jack Draper   7-5, 5-7, 6-1

WTA

Dubai                    Mirra Andreeva beat Clara Tauson   7-6, 6-1

Rio de Janeiro

All eyes were on Joao Fonseca as the youngster took part in his home event fresh from winning the title in Buenos Aires the previous week.  But these are all new experiences for Fonseca and it was perhaps understandable that the pressure of playing at home got to him as he put in a below par performance in his defeat to Alexandre Muller.   Surprisingly Muller would go on to reach the final.

If there is one man who can be relied upon to rack up a substantial number of points on the South American clay, that man is Sebastian Baez and once again he delivered.  He required three sets to beat Navone and another three sets to beat Comesana who pulled off the shock of the week when he ousted Zverev in the quarter final. 

Baez retained the title he won in 2024 with a straightforward straight sets win against Frenchman Muller.

Doha

Its always great to see Andrey Rublev win a title given the mental torture he seems to have to go through on court and he certainly had to work for the Doha title.  After solid wins over Bublik and Borges he had to come through a couple of epics to see off a couple of form players in  De Minaur and Auger Aliassime.   On the other side of the draw, Draper was pulling off similar heroics coming from a set behind to beat both Berrettini and Lehecka.

It was no surprise then that Rublev and Draper traded the opening two sets in the final but Rublev broke clear in the third set to clinch the title.

WTA Dubai

It almost feels like a changing of the guard in the WTA at the moment.  Once again most of the top seeds were knocked out earlier than expected.  Sabalenka lost in the third round to Clara Tauson.  Swiatek lost in the quarter final to Andreeva and it was ultimately these two young ladies who would go on to reach the final.  Tauson followed up her win over Aryna with wins over the Czech duo of Noskova and Muchova and Andreeva took out Rybakina in the semi final.

After a tough opening set it was evident that Tauson was feeling the effects of a long hard week and Mirra cruised to a 7-6, 6-1 win to clinch her first 1000 title - no doubt the first of many!

Here is the FTL Leaderboard for Game Week 5 (Global League)

Impressive to see 6 teams clear 500 points in this game week.  Congrats to Sonja and her team AceCream who were the Game Week 5 winners with an impressive total of 553.798.  Dom Bond and Match Point Winners finished 2nd  and David Josselsohn (DJ_2025) came 2nd in the level 2 league.

Lets take a look at the head to head between Sonja and David in level 2.

Both Sonja and David had terrific teams for this game week.   Sonja had Dubai winner Andreeva and both Doha finalists in Rublev and Draper.  David had both Dubai finalists - Andreeva and Tauson and a solid DH in Noskova.   The key difference between the two sides was player placement however. Sonja had a terrific captain in Draper while Zverev did not bring home the anticipated result for DJ_2025.  Sonja also had Andreeva in a KP position ahead of Rybakina which proved to be an inspired choice.

Congrats to both on a great week.