The Australian Open is over and I am in second place overall in the Fantasy Tennis League, and first place for my picks on the women’s side. (Yes! I am winning the ladies!) Below the jump, preserved for posterity, and Rob C.’s announcements as FTL commissioner providing the results.

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We have our first two winners!!

Our Australian Open (ATP) titlist is ERIN MAHER (56.4 points).
She is followed closely by the Burge Brothers (Greg = 51.2 points; Chris = 48.4 points) and Amy Jo Kroska (48.4 points). There’s still one more round to go, but no one can out-maneuver Erin at this point. She is stiff-arming her way to glory! Congrats, Team Cuddlecakes.

Our Australian Open (WTA) titlist is JEREMY FREESE (32.4 points).
He is followed closely by Erin (31.2 points) and Amy Jo (26.4 points), but they cannot catch Jeremy at this point. Congrats, Team Schlmiel, Schmiedlova!

Turning to our Total Points leaderboard, we see Erin (87.6 points), Jeremy (75.2 points), and Amy Jo (74.8 points) out in front. The men’s and women’s final matches may alter the point totals a little bit, so I’ll send out the final results on Sunday.

According to Erin’s Hawkeye Profile (January edition), she and Jeremy are the two greatest tennis players of all time. Are they also the greatest FTL players of all time? No one has won more FTL tournament titles or FTL Major tournament titles than these two, and their records for most FTL points in a season and FTL points in a career still stand to this day.

Clearly, everyone will be gunning for these two in 2014!

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What a way to kick things off! At the conclusion of a frenzied fortnight, Cuddlecakes and Schlmiel, Schmiedlova! are the Pepsodent and Waldorf salad among FTLers. A hearty round of applause for these two! Take a bow and a victory lap. Fire those sweaty wristbands into your sea of adoring fans. No one can take this moment away from you.

One shining moment, you reached deep inside
One shining moment, you knew you were alive!

I’ve attached the final results for both events (ATP and WTA). The third attachment is the current FTL Standings, combining the results for both events. You’ll see that I’ve included each player’s number of tournament victories, an important tie-breaker (notice that Major tournament victories count double). Finally, I’m sending along the Midwest Sports Player Race, an ongoing look at which ATP and WTA players have accumulated the most FTL points this year (based on seeding and performance). This can serve as a handy reference to FTLers when making future picks. Or, perhaps FTLers want to standardize everyone’s score by the maximum number of points possible for each event. For example, in the ATP event, the maximum number of points anyone could have scored was 127.2 points (when optimally applying weights to players). Therefore, Team Cuddlecakes was able to achieve 44% of the maximum possible score (not too shabby!).

Well, that’s all for now. Go and rest up. Spend a few days away from tennis. Clear your head. And then get ready for more adventure!

Next month, we’ll be in Doha for a WTA Premier event (that’s just a few weeks away!). Also, we’ll have our February Hawkeye Profile and our Midwest Sports Tip of the Month (a new feature where a current FTL leader offers advice on how to improve your game).