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Fantasy tennis app Balki has officially shut down
“And then basically midway through Indian Wells, the app stopped working and I have not heard from them. So this is where my information on what's going on is very limited. I don't know what happened, but I think it's safe to assume Bulkie is not going to be a thing. I hope everyone's okay over there. More likely than not, they probably just axed the project and they haven't been communicative with me.”
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The ATP launched an official fantasy tennis game
“The funny thing is this week, coincidentally, the ATP has launched its own fantasy tennis game. I was not a genius for the last three years thinking that this is something that should get done. And I've even reached out to other podcasts and I've been like, hey, can we do this together? Well, the ATP, they have made a move here. So for now, let's just do that. I have signed up. I have made a league. It's called Monday Match Analysis.”
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Monte Carlo conditions favor natural clay court specialists
“It is of the clay tournaments. It generally reads as the slowest. It's windy and it is slow. The ball is going to lose a ton of energy on the court surface. And the real sort of natural clay quarters, especially because there's less time for the less natural players to even make that adjustment and to get comfortable again on the dirt, the real natural clay quarters are usually going to do pretty well at this tournament.”
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Significant player withdrawals have weakened the tournament field
“I also want to say before we go quarter by quarter, this is a pretty significantly weakened field based on just withdrawal. So I'm going to go down the list right now. It's Djokovic, Fritz, Draper, Davidovic, Vakina, Feis, Munnar, Korda. And then a few Americans didn't sign up. Shelton, Tommy, Paul, a couple others. So, there are plenty of players who you would normally expect to see in a Masters 1000 tournament that we will not be seeing.”
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Alejandro Tabilo is a dangerous dark horse in Monte Carlo
“I want to pick from the section with Tiafoe and Bublik because as far as which unseated player is most likely to make a deep run, it's going to probably be out of that section. And then you have a very close on-paper matchup against Martan Fucovic, who actually beat Tabilo in Bucharest in 2024. But I just feel like Fucovic will have a lot of trouble hunting forehands against Tabilo's lefty precision. And I like the way Tabilo is playing overall. And to me, he's just easily the most dangerous unseated player in that particular section.”