ATP Fantasy Tennis Season is under way and I’ve posted a Fantasy Tennis Guide with fast facts, strategies, and statistics to help you play the game.
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Rear View Mirror – a look at last week’s picks
I picked the winner at Stuttgart but that wasn’t so difficult since it was Rafael Nadal on clay. I got a finalist in Los Angeles – James Blake. We’ll see later today if he wins the title or not. Unfortunately, Nicolas Almagro went out in the first round at Amersfoort but so did Nikolay Davydenko and I told you to stay away from him. Tommy Robredo also lost in the first round for the second week in a row at Stuttgart.
This week we have the second tournament in the U.S. Open Series – Indianapolis, and two more clay court tournaments – Kitzbuhel and Umag. By the way, I’m ranked number 40 in the ATP fantasy game out of over 11,000 teams. Is that cool or what?
KITZBUHEL (clay, $152,380)
This is a 48 player field with the most money. Robredo might face Igor Andreev in the third round so forget him. Andreev is an annoying guy. His ranking is low because he’s coming back from injury so he keeps picking off higher seeds but we can’t pick him because he was ranked below 100 when the fantasy season started.
Nicolas Almagro looks like he has a good path to the semifinals. He lost that first round match last week to Werner Eschauer but Eschauer went all the way to the final. Besides, there’s not much else to choose from in that quarter of the draw.
As for Mikhail Youzhny, I made a mistake by picking him last week. He reached the semifinals at the U.S. Open last year, the quarterfinals at two of the remaining Masters Series events, and has won St. Petersburg which has big prize money. I should have saved him since I can only use him five times. Youzhny is in the top twenty on every surface in tennisinsight.com’s surface adjusted rankings. That was pretty dumb of me.
Juan Monaco should be able to get to the quarterfinals and he’s beaten Andreev both times they’ve met on clay.
Feliciano Lopez beat Juan Carlos Ferrero at Stuttgart last week and they could meet in the second round here. If Ferrero beats Lopez he should meet Werner Eschauer who got all the way to the final at Stuttgart. Still, I’m going with Ferrero because Lopez is inconsistent and Eschauer is untested.
UMAG (clay, $76,970)
Novak Djokovic will win this tournament but you have to save him for the Masters Series events and the U.S. Open.
Ivan Ljubicic has reached two quarterfinals and a semifinal here in his home country so I’m taking him from the top half of the draw.
Carlos Moya keeps chugging along but he gets Stanislaw Wawrinka – a finalist in Stuttgart – in the first round and could meet David Ferrer in the quarterfinals. Moya has beaten Ferrer every time they’ve played on clay but the last time was 2005 so I’m going with Ferrer this week.
INDIANAPOLIS (hard court, $73,000)
Here’s the question: do you pick Andy Roddick to win $73,000 here or save him for later? You have to pick him for the U.S. Open and the Masters Series events in Montreal and Cincinnati and you’ve already used him for Wimbledon so you have one pick left. He hasn’t done well indoors except at Paris and he’ll probably skip it because he will have already qualified for Shanghai. He’s never played St. Petersburg, Moscow or Tokyo and those are the only non-Masters Series events left that pay big money. I’m picking him here because he’s won it twice and though he lost to James Blake last year, I watched James Blake in Los Angeles this week and I don’t expect it to happen again.
Blake is a different story. You have to pick him for the U.S. Open but he hasn’t done well at any of the remaining Masters Series events. He did well at Bangkok and Stockholm last year but that leaves two more weeks you could pick him if you also picked him for Los Angeles. I would save him for New Haven and see if he heats up later in the year because he’d only get $42,800 as a second prize this week.
Tursunov has a relatively easy path to the semifinals so I’m going with him.
Picks
I’m taking Almagro, Monaco, Ferrero and Juan Ignacio Chela at Kitzbuhel. That’s a bit funky because Almagro and Chela are in the same quarter but Kitzbuhel has all the money and there are no good picks in Youzhny’s quarter. At Umag I have Ljubicic and Ferrer. At Indianapolis I have Roddick and Tursunov.
My team: Almagro, Monaco, Ferrero, Chela, Roddick, Tursunov, Ljubicic, Ferrer.
Happy fantasies!
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