{"id":655,"date":"2007-07-28T11:38:27","date_gmt":"2007-07-28T19:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=655"},"modified":"2007-07-28T11:38:27","modified_gmt":"2007-07-28T19:38:27","slug":"atp-fantasy-tennis-picks-sopot-and-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/atp-fantasy-tennis-picks-sopot-and-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"ATP Fantasy Tennis Picks: Sopot and Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re deep into the ATP Fantasy Tennis Season<\/a> so check out my Fantasy Tennis Guide<\/a>. You\u2019ll find 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

The deadline for submission changed from Monday to Sunday this week because Washington starts on Sunday. Be sure to get your teams in by 11am EST and 5pm CET on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Ask any U.S. tourist who went to Europe this summer, an expresso costs a whole lot more in U.S. dollars this year. Why should a tennis fantasy player care about this? Earlier this year, the ATP fantasy game stated all prize money as if the U.S. dollar and the Euro were equivalent. Now they\u2019ve changed that and the European tournaments are worth a whole lot more. Go to my list of tournaments ranked by prize money<\/a>. Notice that the cheapest European tournaments have now jumped over the U.S., Indian and Asian tournaments and the Masters Series events in Madrid and Paris jumped over $120,000 in first prize money!<\/p>\n

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

Juan Monaco is in the final at Kitzbuhel and that\u2019s big money. Andy Roddick is in the semifinals at Indianapolis and my other pick, Dmitry Tursunov, is in the other semifinal against Sam Querrey who beat James Blake to get there. I got nothing left at Umag but there isn\u2019t much left. How could I have known that Viktor Troicki and Andrei Pavel would get to the semifinals?<\/p>\n

There are only two tournaments this week and the prize money is similar so let\u2019s see if we can pick the four semifinalists from each tournament since we need eight players for our fantasy team.<\/p>\n

SOPOT<\/b> (clay, $81,637)<\/p>\n

Gaston Gaudio hasn\u2019t given up playing tennis yet. He actually entered the qualifying here. Steve Darcis is lurking in the qualies too. He\u2019s the guy who took the title at Amersfoort last week despite a ranking of 297.<\/p>\n

Even though Nikolay Davydenko has lost in the first round three weeks in a row and he’ll meet the aforementioned Pavel in the second round and he lost his only previous match to Nicolas Almagro \u2013 his probable quarterfinal opponent, I\u2019m picking Davydenko because I think he\u2019s due to break out. He won this tournament last year and I think he can get to the semifinals.<\/p>\n

Florian Mayer got to the final here last year and he\u2019s beaten Juan Ignacio Chela the last two times they\u2019ve met so I\u2019m going with him.<\/p>\n

Igor Andreev should beat Potito Starace if they get to the quarterfinals but we can\u2019t pick Andreev because his ranking was below 100 when the fantasy season started.<\/p>\n

Tommy Robredo isn\u2019t much better than Davydenko, he lost in the first round two of the last three weeks. But he got to the quarterfinals this week and his probable quarterfinal opponent, Agustin Calleri, has been too inconsistent so I\u2019m getting as much out of Robredo as I can.<\/p>\n

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

WASHINGTON<\/b> (hard court, $74,250)<\/p>\n

Roddick will win his quarter of the draw but you need to save him for the hard court Masters and the U.S. Open. I would go with Hyung-Taik Lee and see if Radek Stepanek can pick off Roddick. Could happen, he beat James Blake last week.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m picking Arnaud Clement over Ivo Karlovic in their quarter because Karlovic is up and down and Clement won this tournament last year.<\/p>\n

I have no idea who to pick in Marat Safin and Mardy Fish\u2019s draw except that it won\u2019t be Fish. He doesn\u2019t appear to be fully recovered from his knee injury and he hurt his other knee last week. Safin is confounding and inconsistent but he reached the quarterfinals last week and the semifinals here last year so I\u2019ll go with him. I\u2019d love to pick Gael Monfils but he\u2019s even more confounding.<\/p>\n

Tommy Haas is back and he\u2019s the question of the week: do you pick him here or save him for the remaining slams and Masters events? He\u2019s done well in Canada and Cincinnati but not since 2004. He got to the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open and semifinals in Paris last year, so save him for the Open and a few fall indoor tournaments but feel free to use him here and hope that he doesn\u2019t pull another muscle. Also be aware that he lost his only match against probable second round opponent Alejandro Falla.<\/p>\n

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

Picks<\/b><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my team: Davydenko, Starace, Mayer, Robredo, Lee, Clement, Safin and Haas.<\/p>\n

Happy fantasies!<\/p>\n\n

Check out our new myspace page<\/a> and add us to your friends network!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re deep into the ATP Fantasy Tennis Season so check out my Fantasy Tennis Guide. You\u2019ll find 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. The deadline for submission changed […]<\/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-655","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\/655","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=655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}