The Agony of Defeat

What, me frustrated? What makes you think that?

Every year, I look forward to playing fantasy tennis. For the past three years, I played on the ATP Tour website, but it looks as if that game is inoperative this year, most likely because the Stanford Group, which sponsored it, is in financial trouble. So I went looking for another site, and it turned out not to be easy. I found a fantasy tennis league at http://www.tennis-pool.com/ and signed up.

The set-up is different. For one thing, you choose teams for both men's tennis and women's tennis. That's a challenge for me, because what I don't know about women's tennis would fill volumes. The reason for that is that I am not interested in women's tennis, but what the heck, I thought I'd give it a try. But wait; there's more. You choose a 10-player team for the WTA and the ATP. For each team, you have $15 million to spend, and each player has a dollar amount attached. The higher-ranked the player, the more he or she costs. That's logical, and I have no complaints. The catch is that you can only trade three players for each tournament. That doesn't work very well, and this week I crashed and burned on the ATP side, at least, before the second round had been completed.

Now that the European clay court season is underway, I wanted to add Rafael Nadal to my team. They don't call him the King of Clay for nothing, and if one of your players wins the tournament, it doesn't hurt so much if all your other players lose early. Unfortunately, Nadal costs about $750,000, and you can only trade three players, so I couldn't add him without exceeding the salary cap. Believe me, I tried six ways to Sunday to do it, but it just didn't work. Up until this week, Andy Murray had led my team, but I was afraid he wouldn't do well on clay, so I wanted someone with a better clay court record. Roger Federer took a last-minute wild card entry into the ATP Masters Series tournament at Monte Carlo, so I chose him and, after much pain, reconfigured my team to accommodate him using only three trades.

The first problem was that two of my players, Steve Darcis and Nicolas Lapentti, had to qualify for the tournament. That was a new experience, because I don't usually pay attention to the qualifying rounds. Lapentti made it, but Darcis did not. Now I was down to 9 players, and the tournament proper had not yet begun. But I took heart, because I had some good clay court players on my team, like Tommy Robredo, Nicolas Almagro, and Igor Andreev, and I figured most of my players were worth one or two wins, even if they didn't go very far into the tournament. Not!

By the end of the first round, I had lost 7 of my 9 players. Roger Federer, seeded number 2 in the tournament, had beaten Andreas Seppi, and Nicolas Lapentti beat Radek Stepanek, seeded number 15 in the tournament, a good win. Then came the second round, in which Federer lost to his countryman Stan Wawrinka in straight sets. Only Lapentti, the qualifier, survived, defeating Russian Marat Safin. Okay, I'm down to one player with three rounds left to play. And who does Nicolas Lapentti face in round 3? Rafael Nadal. Want to bet who will win that match?

As it happens, I'm doing a little better on the WTA side of the ledger, but I am just not interested, even though I will take all the points I can get. But it's the men's side that interests me, and before tomorrow is over I'll be wiped out. And by the way, Andy Murray is doing just fine, thank you very much. Oh, the agony of defeat! (But next week I'll squeeze Nadal onto my team. You can bet on that.)