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Not sure how many people actually care about the U.S Open Series standings, but here's a link to the offical site with standings as of Monday.
Safe to say that this is going to change considerably in the coming weeks. Stepanek, Tursunov, Blake in the top three won't last long.
Thoughts on who we should expect to see top 10 outside of the obvious Federer and Nadal???
Here's a good site with weekly help for your fantasy tennis picks. This link is for this past week's picks.
Sports Illustrated tennis guru Jon Wertheim's take on who's up and who's down on both the ATP and WTA tour after last week's results.
I would have added Nick Davydenko in the Ad-Out column with his third consecutive first round loss.
Two tournaments already underway this week on the ATP tour; Washington on hard courts, and Sopot on Clay. I've always found it kind of funny to have clay court tourney's going on during the lead up to the US Open, but to each their own I guess. I suppose those players in Sopot aren't holding out much hope for the last Slam of the year and are trying to bank whatever remaining ranking points they have a chance at. Here's my look at this week's tournaments, for any fantasy poolies out there.
Washington
Andy Roddick has to be the favourite here this week, despite being knocked out in the semi's last week in Indianapolis by relatively unknown Canadian Frank Dancevic. The rest of the draw is relatively weak, as is evidenced by some of the players who would not usually be seeded (Russell, Spadea, Llodra.) I could see Roddick vs Karlovic in one semi. Even though Clement won this title a year ago, he has not played a hard court match since March, and is 4-8 on the year on this surface. On the other side it's also unpredicatble, but I'm going with Safin vs Haas if the latter can stay healthy. You have to figure Marat is going to kick in a consistent tournament at some point, and there is not much opposition in his quarter of the draw. If Haas is feeling healthy, he is a strong favourite not only in his quarter but to take the tournament as well. I'd even put my money on him to come out on top here. Those involved in the ATP fantasy pool, may want to rest Roddick this week however, as there are much bigger tournaments to save him for down the road. A player can only be picked 5 times and for Roddick that likely means Wimbledon, Montreal, Cincy, Flushing Meadows and maybe Paris as well.
Sopot
Quite a few clay court specialists playing again this week in Europe. I have to admit I personally hate the term "clay court specialist" as I feel it's not giving these players their due respect. We don't call guys like Blake, Safin and Haas hard court specialists, right? At any rate, I'd go with Almagro vs Acasuso in the top half (although I now see Almagro was upset by Zabaleta.) And in the bottom half, my choices are Andreev and Horna even if they seem like a bit of a stretch.
As a side note, I'm shocked at the unravelling of Gaston Gaudio's clay court game this year. The former French Open champ failed to even make it out of qualifying here and is 5-13 in 2007 on his favourite surface.
Hi everyone, my name is Mike and I will be taking over from Lisa as the author of this blog. At least for the time being and provided she thinks I'm doing a good job!
I'm living in Canada, (home of Frank Dancevic!), and have been a huge tennis fan since I was a kid. I've never posted my own blog before, but once provided Lisa with some in-person updates from the Canadian Masters event in Montreal. I'll be going again in about a week, and I'm really looking forward to that.
I'll be mostly commenting on the ATP tour, so I hope that's ok with everyone. Expect a couple of posts later today and tomorrow on some current events and links.
If anyone has any advice as I learn my way, it would be appreciated!
Cheers,
Mike
Good news. A former reader, Mike, has volunteered to begin updating this site again. He tells me he leans more ATP than WTA so expect lots of men's tennis info.
New updates will start soon.
