{"id":941,"date":"2008-08-23T15:38:29","date_gmt":"2008-08-23T23:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=941"},"modified":"2008-08-23T15:38:29","modified_gmt":"2008-08-23T23:38:29","slug":"atp-fantasy-tennis-picks-for-the-us-open-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/atp-fantasy-tennis-picks-for-the-us-open-2\/","title":{"rendered":"ATP Fantasy Tennis Picks for the US Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s time for the ATP Fantasy Tennis Season<\/a> so check out our Fantasy Tennis Guide<\/a>. You\u2019ll find Fast Facts, Strategies, and Statistics to help you play the game.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sign up<\/a> 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

This week’s submission deadline is Monday, August 25th, 10am (EST) in the U.S.\/4pm (CET) in Europe.<\/p>\n

For the first time since I\u2019ve been doing fantasy tennis picks, Rafael Nadal\u2019s name is at the top of the draw and Roger Federer\u2019s is at the bottom. Yes, Rafael Nadal has finally taken over the number one spot. Now it\u2019s time to see if Nadal can add the US Open title and turn the table on Federer by winning his third slam this year.<\/p>\n

Pay close attention this week because it\u2019s the last slam of the year and you can make up a lot of ground \u2013 or lose a lot of ground \u2013 with your picks. We need eight players for our fantasy team so let\u2019s pick the quarterfinalists.<\/p>\n

US Open draw<\/a> (hard court, first prize: $1.5 million)<\/p>\n

There is very little between Nadal and the quarterfinals. Tomas Berdych beat Nadal the first three times they met on hard court but Nadal beat him easily in Miami this year and on grass last year. Ivo Karlovic has lost here in the first round for the past two years and Philipp Kohlschreiber is 0-4 against Nadal. Nadal is our obvious first pick.<\/p>\n

James Blake is having a solid but unspectacular year. He doesn\u2019t have a title yet but he did reach the quarterfinals at three of the four hard court Masters Series events and the Australian Open, and he just reached the semifinals at the Olympics with a win over Federer. He has a pretty easy quarter too. David Nalbandian is in this quarter but Nalbandian hasn\u2019t gone past the third round since 2005 and Gael Monfils, his possible fourth round opponent, just beat him at the Olympics. James Blake it is.<\/p>\n

There are four people to watch in David Ferrer\u2019s section. Ferrer reached the semifinals last year but he didn\u2019t make it past the third round in Toronto or Cincinnati and he lost to Janko Tipsarevic in the first round at the Olympics. Juan Martin Del Potro is on a tear. He\u2019s on a four tournament winning streak, two on clay and two on hard court, and he\u2019s the first player in the Open Era to win his first four tournaments consecutively. Juan Monaco reached the fourth round here last year but he lost in the first round at the Olympics and New Haven. It doesn\u2019t look like he\u2019s recovered from the injury that kept him out for seven weeks. Gilles Simon won the title in Indianapolis, reached the semifinals in Toronto where he beat Federer, then lost to James Blake in Cincinnati and at the Olympics. I\u2019m picking between Del Potro and Simon. Simon has performed best against higher ranked competition – Del Potro\u2019s titles were in smaller tournaments – so I\u2019m going with Simon.<\/p>\n

Andy Murray reached the semifinals in Toronto and beat Novak Djokovic to take the title in Cincinnati. I\u2019m still not convinced he can perform consistently in big events \u2013 he lost his first round match at the Olympics, but he has a 3-0 record over Stanislas Wawrinka on hard court this year alone and he\u2019s 2-0 lifetime over Feliciano Lopez. Mikhail Youzhny is probably his biggest hurdle but Youzhny hasn\u2019t gone past the third round this summer in a hard court event. Murray it is.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not feeling very positive about Andy Roddick\u2019s chances here. He\u2019s had a lot of injuries lately, he lost his second match at both Wimbledon and Toronto, and he lost to Viktor Troicki \u2013 ranked number 71 \u2013 in the quarterfinals in Washington. And his second round opponent could be Ernests Gulbis who reached the fourth round here last year. Meanwhile, Nicolas Kiefer is 3-0 over Fernando Gonzalez lifetime. Gonzalez did get to the semifinals at the Olympics, but he failed to get past the second round at Toronto or Cincinnati and he hasn\u2019t been past the third round here since 2002. Gulbis is too inconsistent, he gets to the quarterfinals one week then loses in the first round the next, so I\u2019m picking Kiefer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s would be very hard to pick anyone but Novak Djokovic in his section. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga is back after a three month injury break – he lost in the first round at the Olympics. Marin Cilic is dangerous but he\u2019s also like Gulbis: young and inconsistent. Tommy Robredo and Marat Safin are both 4-8 on hard court this year. Djokovic it is.<\/p>\n

Nikolay Davydenko\u2019s section is hard to call. Davydenko is in a funk. He hasn\u2019t won more than two matches in a tournament since the end of the clay court season. Dmitry Tursunov has never been past the third round here. Richard Gasquet gets Tommy Haas in the first round and Haas has reached the quarterfinals for the past two years. Gasquet reached the fourth round two straight years before withdrawing after his second round match last year. He skipped the Olympics to prepare for the US Open so I\u2019m going to say that this is the year he reaches the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the toughest part of the process today: figuring out who might beat Federer. There are three candidates in his section: Fernando Verdasco who reached a career high number 11 in July, Igor Andreev is also at a career high ranking of 23, and Radek Stepanek who beat Federer on clay this year. The problem is that none of them has done well here. Stepanek reached the third round once, in 2003, Verdasco reached the fourth round in 2005, Andreev has never been past the second round. Say what you will about the state of Federer\u2019s game, but he\u2019s reached the final at the last two slams so he\u2019s my pick in this section.<\/p>\n

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

Here are my picks: Nadal, Blake, Simon, Murray, Kiefer, Djokovic, Gasquet, Federer.<\/p>\n

Happy fantasies!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s time for the ATP Fantasy Tennis Season so check out our 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. This week’s submission deadline is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","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=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}