{"id":928,"date":"2008-08-04T16:22:25","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T00:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=928"},"modified":"2008-08-04T16:22:25","modified_gmt":"2008-08-05T00:22:25","slug":"atp-fantasy-picks-for-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/atp-fantasy-picks-for-los-angeles\/","title":{"rendered":"ATP Fantasy Picks for Los Angeles"},"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 morning, August 4, 4am (EST) in the U.S.\/10am (CET) in Europe.<\/p>\n

This week we have one 28 player tournament in Los Angeles. We need eight players for our fantasy team so let\u2019s pick the quarterfinalists.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles draw<\/a> (hard court, first prize: $79,000)<\/p>\n

Andy Roddick is the number one seed in this tournament but I don\u2019t know if he\u2019ll show up. He dropped out of Cincinnati with neck\/shoulder soreness and he had shoulder problems earlier this year. There are two more US Open tune-ups in Washington and New Haven so he might want to save himself for one or both of those. I used him at Queen\u2019s, Wimbledon, and Toronto, and I was saving him for the US Open and an indoor fall event that pays more money. If you do pick him and he drops out before the start of the event, you won\u2019t be able to substitute for him after the Monday deadline, but it also wouldn\u2019t count as one of his uses.<\/p>\n

Roddick will have no problem getting to the quarterfinals if he plays and Tommy Haas shouldn\u2019t have a hard time either. However, Haas beat Roddick the last three times they met including Indian Wells this year, so I wouldn\u2019t waste Roddick this week. But that presents a problem because Lu Yen-Hsun is not eligible for our fantasy team because he was ranked too low at the beginning of the fantasy season. Since there\u2019s no one promising in the qualifying draw<\/a>, I\u2019m going to pick an additional player further down the draw.<\/p>\n

In Feliciano Lopez\u2019 section, Denis Gremelmayr is 1-3 on hard court this year and Fabio Fognini is 1-2. Lopez is just okay on hard court this year with a 7-7 record, but he only has to beat the winner of the Gremelmayr\/Fognini match to reach the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n

Bobby Reynolds is in Marat Safin\u2019s section and Reynolds beat Safin in Miami this year. Reynolds has a 5-5 record on hard court versus Safin\u2019s 2-6 record, but Reynolds isn\u2019t eligible for our fantasy team and neither is Wayne Odesnik. Can Safin beat John Isner? It\u2019s a tossup but Safin did reach the quarterfinals here last year so I\u2019m picking him.<\/p>\n

Carlos Moya reached the quarterfinals in Cincinnati and he beat Nikolay Davydenko and Igor Andreev to get there. He\u2019s 4-0 over Malisse so I\u2019m going to say he can get to the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n

Juan Martin Del Potro beat Kunitsyn on grass and hard court last year. However, Dudi Sela beat Del Potro in Tokyo on hard court last year. This is killing me because I hate picking all seeded players and Del Potro hasn\u2019t played much on hard court this year, but he got to the semifinals on grass in s\u2019Hertogenbosch and he won the last two ATP events on clay, so I\u2019m guessing his confidence is sky high. I\u2019m going with Del Potro. By the way, two years ago seven of the top eight seeds reached the quarterfinals so there is a precedent. Not the strongest argument for picking so many seeded players, I know, but we don’t have a lot of choices because so many players are off to the Olympics this week.<\/p>\n

Mardy Fish\u2019s section is the hardest one to pick. He has the best record on hard court but he\u2019s lost his last four matches. Vince Spadea reached the quarterfinals here last year and he beat Dmitry Tursunov in the process. He also beat Sebastien Grosjean on hard court in Adelaide this year. However, Fish can probably beat Spadea on hard court. What to do? Since I didn\u2019t pick anyone in Roddick\u2019s quarter, I\u2019m going with both Fish and Spadea.<\/p>\n

Fernando Verdasco got to the third round at Cincinnati which is more than anyone else in his section can say so he\u2019s my last pick.<\/p>\n

One last note, be sure to check the draw at the last minute possible because players could get shifted around.<\/p>\n

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

Here are my picks: Haas, Lopez, Safin, Moya, Del Potro, Fish, Spadea, Verdasco.<\/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-928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}