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Fell a little behind here, although I seem to have had company in that with the other RR dynasties. Regardless, let's get moving again.
January
First up was Prakash Mooljee, and I guessed wrong in sending him to Sao Paolo instead of Noumea. He ended up barely as the 8th seed, where he would have been sixth in the other one. Last-minute entries will do that to you sometimes, and there's a few AI players down here -- you never know what they are going to do. Anyway, Mooljee got through a couple of potentially dangerous early-round matches, then lost to Zourab Andronikov(GRG). It wasn't close -- 6-2, 6-2 -- but that's not a huge surprise. Mooljee is almost a year away from being at the Georgian #1's level; Andronikov is the kind of player who should be out of the challenger field soon, and I'm a bit surprised it hasn't happened already. He would go on to lose very narrowly in the final.
The next week, I screwed up with my top players, entering them both in Sydney(250). I intended to send one each there and to Auckland. Gaskell was the beneficiary of my mess-up. As it was in Sydney, both had more trouble than expected in the quarterfinals. Mehul escaped Federer, and Girsh narrowly got through against Bourdet, both in tight three-set matches. It was smooth sailing in the semis, and Mehul reversed last year's trend in winning 6-4, 7-5 to take the title. It was one of those where it all came down to a few break points. Girsh had the more consistent pressure, but lost all three of his chances while Mehul snagged 2 of 3, and that was the match.
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