{"id":650,"date":"2007-07-22T12:53:45","date_gmt":"2007-07-22T20:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=650"},"modified":"2007-07-22T12:53:45","modified_gmt":"2007-07-22T20:53:45","slug":"atp-fantasy-tennis-should-you-pick-roddick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/atp-fantasy-tennis-should-you-pick-roddick\/","title":{"rendered":"ATP Fantasy Tennis: Should You Pick Roddick?"},"content":{"rendered":"

ATP Fantasy Tennis Season<\/a> is under way and I\u2019ve posted a Fantasy Tennis Guide<\/a> with fast facts, strategies, and statistics to help you play the game.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sign up and join our subleague<\/a>! It\u2019s called tennisdiary.com. We send weekly email updates to all subleague members before the submission deadline.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Rear View Mirror<\/strong> – a look at last week\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

I picked the winner at Stuttgart but that wasn\u2019t so difficult since it was Rafael Nadal on clay. I got a finalist in Los Angeles – James Blake. We\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019m ranked number 40 in the ATP fantasy game out of over 11,000 teams. Is that cool or what?<\/p>\n

KITZBUHEL<\/strong> (clay, $152,380)<\/p>\n

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\u2019s coming back from injury so he keeps picking off higher seeds but we can\u2019t pick him because he was ranked below 100 when the fantasy season started.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s not much else to choose from in that quarter of the draw.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>\u2019s surface adjusted rankings. That was pretty dumb of me.<\/p>\n

Juan Monaco should be able to get to the quarterfinals and he’s beaten Andreev both times they’ve met on clay.<\/p>\n

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\u2019m going with Ferrero because Lopez is inconsistent and Eschauer is untested.<\/p>\n

Kitzbuhel draw<\/a><\/p>\n

UMAG<\/strong> (clay, $76,970)<\/p>\n

Novak Djokovic will win this tournament but you have to save him for the Masters Series events and the U.S. Open.<\/p>\n

Ivan Ljubicic has reached two quarterfinals and a semifinal here in his home country so I\u2019m taking him from the top half of the draw.<\/p>\n

Carlos Moya keeps chugging along but he gets Stanislaw Wawrinka \u2013 a finalist in Stuttgart \u2013 in the first round and could meet David Ferrer in the quarterfinals. Moya has beaten Ferrer every time they\u2019ve played on clay but the last time was 2005 so I\u2019m going with Ferrer this week.<\/p>\n

Umag draw<\/a><\/p>\n

INDIANAPOLIS<\/strong> (hard court, $73,000)<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s 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\u2019ve already used him for Wimbledon so you have one pick left. He hasn\u2019t done well indoors except at Paris and he\u2019ll probably skip it because he will have already qualified for Shanghai. He\u2019s never played St. Petersburg, Moscow or Tokyo and those are the only non-Masters Series events left that pay big money. I\u2019m picking him here because he\u2019s won it twice and though he lost to James Blake last year, I watched James Blake in Los Angeles this week and I don\u2019t expect it to happen again.<\/p>\n

Blake is a different story. You have to pick him for the U.S. Open but he hasn\u2019t 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\u2019d only get $42,800 as a second prize this week.<\/p>\n

Tursunov has a relatively easy path to the semifinals so I\u2019m going with him.<\/p>\n

Indianapolis draw<\/a><\/p>\n

Picks<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m taking Almagro, Monaco, Ferrero and Juan Ignacio Chela at Kitzbuhel. That\u2019s 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\u2019s quarter. At Umag I have Ljubicic and Ferrer. At Indianapolis I have Roddick and Tursunov.<\/p>\n

My team: Almagro, Monaco, Ferrero, Chela, Roddick, Tursunov, Ljubicic, Ferrer.<\/p>\n

Happy fantasies!<\/p>\n

\n

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ATP Fantasy Tennis Season is under way and I\u2019ve posted a Fantasy Tennis Guide with fast facts, strategies, and statistics to help you play the game. Sign up and join our subleague! It\u2019s called tennisdiary.com. We send weekly email updates to all subleague members before the submission deadline. Rear View Mirror – a look at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,22,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atp-players","category-atp-tournaments","category-fantasy-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}