Posted by Steven on 30/6/2009, 1:16 am
81.86.247.14
WIMBLEDON BOTB - ROUND 4 'SYNDICATED' REPORT
All of today's matches went the way the bookies' odds this morning suggested they would go, but some of those odds were so tight that if you multiplied them together, they implied only an 8% chance of every single match turning out that way. Who could have guessed that the last match to start would still be on court after 10.30 pm or that my ATP 'twin' (Stani and I are both WR 18, for those who don't remember the ATP twinning discussions from the start of the tournament) would nearly spoil an almost perfect day!
Of course, many of the favs to reach the QFs at the start of the tournament were already out. Hence, the 21% who had Hewitt getting to the QFs & the 47% who went for Haas did very well out of today's results. The 3% who had the Mosquito & the 9% who had Ivo did even better, with even more entrants grateful to the last two for damage limitation, given that their R4 opponents had been picked by more people than them before the tournament started.
Detailed results can be found at http://www.britishtennis.net/competitions.html
TEAMS
The top four in the teams league are unchanged. AM.com, still in 1st place, were nearly caught by the Feddies at one point, but ended up with a full 1 point lead thanks to some of the Rogi fans not picking Muzza to reach the QFs, while Team CC in 3rd place and R2 winners the Hewitts in 4th place both closed the gap on the teams above them.
T4Y took the R4 lead after the Haas win and kept it throughout the round, rising 3 to 5th as a result. They are followed by no. 1 ranked team Rusedski.co.uk, up 1 to 6th at Wimby today, and day 7's fastest risers, BT.net, up 4 to 7th.
Dropping down fast are BBC 606, down 3 to 8th, and JM.org, down 3 to 9th. None of the bottom six moved more than one place and MTF remain at the foot of the table after another round despite overtaking GBTG at one point during the day.
TOP 10
There were big changes in the top 10 throughout the day, but when the dust had settled, world no. 66 T01 (CC) had risen 3 to 1st and somehow managed to open up a 4-point lead after getting 7/8 R4 results correct.
t12j23r90 (AM), up 38 to 3rd, and sid (AM), up 46 to 5th, also got 7/8 on Monday and the rest of the new top 9 got 6/8 - Omegadoom (TA), up 2 to 2nd, Borovnia (TY), up 3 to 4th, GoGo (AM) & jack.hl.ng (CC), both up 6 to 6=, kaseldop (GR), up 6 to 8th, and Shizzard (IN), up 11 to 9th.
SLess (CC) moved up from 3rd to 1st early on but 'only' got 5/8 for the day as a whole and eventually dropped to 10th. Those who started the day in the top two suffered an even worse fate though, Jessie181 (TA) dropping 19 from 2nd to 21st after getting just 4/8 and Jtdrum10 (TA) plummeting 49 from 1st to 50th with just 3/8 quarter-finalists correct.
ON THE RISE
kinley31 (BT) may have started the day in the bottom half of the table, but all of his quarter-finalists had survived the first week. Amazingly, they all came through for him in R4, giving him a clean sweep (8/8) and a massive rise of 214 places to 38th. Well done!
Given that the bookies were offering odds of about 12/1 against these 8 all getting through at the start of the day, goodness only knows what odds he could have got on these 8 reaching the QFs when he picked them at the start of the tournament ...
Six players got 7/8 correct. Three of them have already been mentioned in the top 10 section, but the others all started the day outside the top 300 (one even outside the top 400!) and were the only other entrants who moved up over 120 places: ballyfan (GB), up 189 to 123rd, Derevko (MT), up 191 to 168th, GS2 (IN), up 133 to 284th. What a difference a day makes!
DODGY DROPPERS
Two entrants only got one quarter-finalist correct - Donna Hammond (TN) (our Safin to win Wimby picker, who was already last and has just about sewn up the lanterne rouge position now) and Dark's mum's friend (if you're on CC, you'll understand!) Alien (CC), down 147 to 424th, making her the biggest faller of the day.
Our first entrant to hail from another planet must have known her days were numbered when her ultimate winner pick (the Sod) went out early in the day, but like Donna and in true glorious BOTB style, she can be proud of having gone out with a bang instead of a whimper. Rumour has it that she has already flown back to Ork to join Mork but we hope she returns for the next BOTB!
TEAM KO
Because R4 is all scheduled for one day at Wimbledon, the team KO SFs are all over in a day too. The first semi-final (a Swiss v Scots affair) went down to the last match of the day (ditto!), with last year's Wimby KO runners up Andy Murray(.com) seeing off (the) Fed(dies) for the first time this Wimbledon by 18.40-17.78.
In the other semi, Team CC, 3rd last year, saw off last year's team KO winners Rusedski.co.uk by just 0.14 points, 19.10-18.96.
The team KO Finals (to be decided by the results of the remaining 7 matches) line up as follows:
FINAL: (4) AndyMurray.com are tied with (6) Centre Court Forum 0-0
3-4: (1) RogerFederer.com are tied with (10) Rusedski.co.uk 0-0
5-6: (8) LleytonHewitt.biz are tied with (3) BBC 606 boards 0-0
7-8: (5) JamieMurray.org are tied with (2) AndyRoddick.com 0-0
9-10: (13) BritishTennis.net are tied with (7) Tennis4you.com 0-0
11-12: (9) TalkAboutTennis are tied with (14) RichardGasquet.net 0-0
13-14: (16) MensTennisForums are tied with (15) GBTennisGirls.com 0-0
15-16: (12) Other Boards are tied with (11) Tennisopolis.com 0-0
OUTLOOK
All of the top 9 have all of their semi-finalists still in apart from one who just has two. All in all, no less than 275 entrants (over 60%) have not lost a semi-finalist yet, with over 200 having gone for Duckboy, Muzza, Nole & Fed.
Over 400 entrants in total have at least 3 semi-finalists still in with a shout of getting there. Nobody has lost all of their semi-finalists yet, but four entrants have just one player left who can still score for them.
With three former world no. 1s and slam winners in the top half of the draw to challenge Muzza and two former slam winners in the bottom half including Fed, it promises to be a tumultuous week, in BOTB as well as on court!
QUOTES OF THE DAY
You'll have to make do with a few early in the day quotes from AM.com today because I haven't got time to look for more. They were talking about whether someone (not me!) should introduce some QOTD rankings and whether they might look like the real BOTB rankings upside down:
jaydu was wondering if the gorillas were really capable of coming out on top that way: "Isnt there a quote about if you give them enough typewriters they will come up with the collective works of Shakespeare so it only figures our gorillas could come up with som3thing insightful for QOTD"
Oneminutetomidknight "Yeh, even the Gorillas could probably work out in five minutes how to type 'Never pick Mathieu'"
ASE sees it as a way to get back to the no. 1 slot he relinquished back in ancient times (i.e. over a year ago): "In an average pick'em, I get more entries in the quote of the day than I get SemiFinalists."
Other than that, it just got weird ...
Fitzy "Where's my mention for defending getting mentioned no matter what the reason?"
jaydu (apologies, but I think he must have a degree in philosophy) replied: "if you got a mention for defending the mentioning that would lead to people mentioning the unfairness of a mention just for mentioning who would also expect to be mentioned ... Ooops, I think i just fried my brain cell"
AllyB "Oh no, not again. I'll pop another in the post tomorrow.I have to warn you though Jaydu, that this is probably the last one I can spare!"
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