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Brian Swartz · 09-09-2017, 07:27 PM

2054 Olympics
China

I've never had the Olympics not be on hardcourt. I think that's mandatory or something. Nobody has ever won the singles more than once; we had the last two golds with Girsh and Mooljee, though I held little hope anyone would continue that streak against the great Frenchman. Last time out the Swedes had the first back-to-back doubles gold medalists, the fabulous Arvid Hjoch a member of both teams but with different partners(Oberg, then Trulsen).

For our doubles, I didn't expect a whole lot but the effort must be made. Mehul/Dudwadkar went in seeded 8th, a little worse than I'd hoped. An easy first round, then they got through a pair of tiebreaks against the South African team in the second. The Rhodes brothers, seeded 4th, figured to end that in the quarterfinals ... but we narrowly escaped, 4-6, 6-3, 10-7! On the medal round, a heck of a result. Top four seeds were all out at this point, and the Spanish 6-seeds Mercari/Cordovez were pretty easily dispatched. All of a sudden it was the gold medal match, with unseeded Hungarians of all things on the other side of the net. After we took the early lead, Kovacs/Del Petro rallied to their credit, but we slammed the door on them at the end. 6-3, 7-6(2), 2-6, 3-6, 6-0 ... and Sri Lanka has won Olympic gold in doubles for the first time! Interestingly, this means all four of my created players that I've stayed with have one; Mehul disappointingly never got it done in singles, and it's the first Dudwadkar now as well.

The solo draw found less desirable results. Prakash Mooljee had hopes for a medal, but instead bowed out to Schmucker in the third round. Embarassing. Ritwik Dudwadkar had some trouble with fading prodigy Nikitin at that stage, but made it through. A solid win over Jolland in the quarters put him in the medal round again ... but he was thumped by Kaspar and then lost the bronze match to Fangio. Surprising silver-medalist Martin Zarco got the expected treatment by Mateo Kaspar, your obvious winner. More impressive was Zarco's 12-10 third-set survival against the Italian Fangio in the semis.

Already fairly worn after all the matches this week, Dudwadkar faces four tournaments in six weeks still. Some early defeats are virtually inevitable. And the ranking system bug that crops up every so often strikes again. After getting 270 points for his Olympic efforts, he loses 460 points and drops to #7. He was slightly inflated before, but now he's hundreds of points below where he should be. Grrrr. Not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things because he's likely to end the year in the 5-7 range anyway, but still annoying.

09-09-2017, 07:27 PM	#673
Brian Swartz Grizzled Veteran Join Date: May 2006	2054 Olympics China I've never had the Olympics not be on hardcourt. I think that's mandatory or something. Nobody has ever won the singles more than once; we had the last two golds with Girsh and Mooljee, though I held little hope anyone would continue that streak against the great Frenchman. Last time out the Swedes had the first back-to-back doubles gold medalists, the fabulous Arvid Hjoch a member of both teams but with different partners(Oberg, then Trulsen). For our doubles, I didn't expect a whole lot but the effort must be made. Mehul/Dudwadkar went in seeded 8th, a little worse than I'd hoped. An easy first round, then they got through a pair of tiebreaks against the South African team in the second. The Rhodes brothers, seeded 4th, figured to end that in the quarterfinals ... but we narrowly escaped, 4-6, 6-3, 10-7! On the medal round, a heck of a result. Top four seeds were all out at this point, and the Spanish 6-seeds Mercari/Cordovez were pretty easily dispatched. All of a sudden it was the gold medal match, with unseeded Hungarians of all things on the other side of the net. After we took the early lead, Kovacs/Del Petro rallied to their credit, but we slammed the door on them at the end. 6-3, 7-6(2), 2-6, 3-6, 6-0 ... and Sri Lanka has won Olympic gold in doubles for the first time! Interestingly, this means all four of my created players that I've stayed with have one; Mehul disappointingly never got it done in singles, and it's the first Dudwadkar now as well. The solo draw found less desirable results. Prakash Mooljee had hopes for a medal, but instead bowed out to Schmucker in the third round. Embarassing. Ritwik Dudwadkar had some trouble with fading prodigy Nikitin at that stage, but made it through. A solid win over Jolland in the quarters put him in the medal round again ... but he was thumped by Kaspar and then lost the bronze match to Fangio. Surprising silver-medalist Martin Zarco got the expected treatment by Mateo Kaspar, your obvious winner. More impressive was Zarco's 12-10 third-set survival against the Italian Fangio in the semis. Already fairly worn after all the matches this week, Dudwadkar faces four tournaments in six weeks still. Some early defeats are virtually inevitable. And the ranking system bug that crops up every so often strikes again. After getting 270 points for his Olympic efforts, he loses 460 points and drops to #7. He was slightly inflated before, but now he's hundreds of points below where he should be. Grrrr. Not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things because he's likely to end the year in the 5-7 range anyway, but still annoying. Last edited by Brian Swartz : 09-09-2017 at 07:29 PM.