2019 French Open at Superbru
Round One of the 2019 French Open gets underway on the 26th May (Sunday) and as always there's plenty of excitement among tennis fans and Superbru players as we approach this year's second Grand Slam. Novak Djokovic and Naomi Osaka were the Champions in Melbourne when the Australian Open took place back in January, both will be aiming to make it back-to-back 2019 Slam wins here.
In case you're new to tennis events at Superbru, here's a quick run-through of how things work before we get into a small preview of what we can expect at this year's tournament.
Rather than having a full, rather exhausting list of the many players that will be competing in Paris this year, we draw up four bands of players containing the top seeds for both the men's and women's title. By selecting one player from each list, you are left with a four-person team for a given round and you will score points based on how well each of those players get on.
The bands for Round One of the French Open can be seen below. Note: You are allowed to pick a fresh team of players for each and every round of the tournament meaning it is sometimes best to pick players you are most confident will perform best in the particular match they have in a round rather than always picking the player you believe will win the overall Championship in every single round.
The bands are now open and ready for you to pick your players for Round One. Remember, as with all Superbru games, you can change your picks as many times as you like right up until the round deadline. Feel free to make some early picks that ensure you don't miss the deadline safe in the knowledge that you can come back and re-think your 4-player team once fixtures are confirmed after Thursday's draw. Bands for Round Two will open soon after the draw and may contain players that have been knocked out in Round One due to the very short (sometimes non-existent) gap between the rounds. In such cases, the player will be marked 'Withdrawn' and you will receive an e-mail alert if a player you have picked has been marked.
Net sets won - 3 points per set: That is, the number of sets a player wins a match by. For instance, if Roger Federer defeats Novak Djokovic by 3 sets to 1 he would be awarded six points as he won by 2 sets.
Net games won - 1 point per game won in a set won by the player: The same thing applies. Going back to the Roger Federer example, if he had beaten Djokovic 7-6, 3-6, 6-0, 6-4 then he would receive an additional 9 points for the number of games he won each set by (1 point in the first set, 6 in the third and 2 in the fourth).
In the Women's Championship, Maria Sharapova will be absent with a shoulder problem and it'll be worth keeping a close eye on Serena Williams and Caroline Wozniacki who both withdrew from last week's Italian open with slight injuries (both are still set to play at Roland Garros).
The bands in our game contain the top 16 available players in the world ahead of either championship and will only change to include other players once certain seeds are knocked out. In the event of a Band One player being knocked out, the top seed from Band Two will replace them while the 17th overall seed would go into Band Two as a replacement and so on.
Though, as we have mentioned, our game is designed to ensure each individual round is important and therefore your picks are likely to vary, it is of course useful to know who the tournament favourites are. Here's a look at the French Open winners from the last 7 years:
As you're likely to already know, the French Open almost belongs to Rafael Nadal. The 'King of Clay' has won this tournament 11 times - he is the only player to have won a Grand Slam tournament that many times in the Open era. In total, Nadal has won 86 French Open matches and lost just 2. The men to have defeated him, Robin Soderling (2009) and Novak Djokovic (2015), should probably receive some kind of trophy simply for beating Nadal. Especially since they both ended up losing in the final in those respective years!
Nadal is of course this year's favourite for the Men's championship with the bookies but whilst he has just won the Italian open, it's worth noting he did lose a match on clay the week before in Madrid against Stefanos Tsitipas. The favourite for the Women's championship is seen to be Simona Halep, with Naomi Osaka and Kiki Bertens not far behind her.
Click here to play the French Open at Superbru
We hope you enjoy playing our French Open game for this year's tournament and feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments! Be sure to get your leagues set up and invite friends and family members to get involved this weekend as the action begins on Sunday.
In case you're new to tennis events at Superbru, here's a quick run-through of how things work before we get into a small preview of what we can expect at this year's tournament.
Bands
As is the case in our 'Superstars' or '5-a-side' games in other tournaments such as Super Rugby, the Premier League and the World Cup, the aim of the game when playing the Australian Open at Superbru is to pick the player you believe will be most successful from four different lists of players known as 'bands'.Rather than having a full, rather exhausting list of the many players that will be competing in Paris this year, we draw up four bands of players containing the top seeds for both the men's and women's title. By selecting one player from each list, you are left with a four-person team for a given round and you will score points based on how well each of those players get on.
The bands for Round One of the French Open can be seen below. Note: You are allowed to pick a fresh team of players for each and every round of the tournament meaning it is sometimes best to pick players you are most confident will perform best in the particular match they have in a round rather than always picking the player you believe will win the overall Championship in every single round.
The bands are now open and ready for you to pick your players for Round One. Remember, as with all Superbru games, you can change your picks as many times as you like right up until the round deadline. Feel free to make some early picks that ensure you don't miss the deadline safe in the knowledge that you can come back and re-think your 4-player team once fixtures are confirmed after Thursday's draw. Bands for Round Two will open soon after the draw and may contain players that have been knocked out in Round One due to the very short (sometimes non-existent) gap between the rounds. In such cases, the player will be marked 'Withdrawn' and you will receive an e-mail alert if a player you have picked has been marked.
Scoring
The game is designed to reward players who win the most comfortably in each round, hence why looking at each player's opposition is a good idea. Players get their points from two different factors:Net sets won - 3 points per set: That is, the number of sets a player wins a match by. For instance, if Roger Federer defeats Novak Djokovic by 3 sets to 1 he would be awarded six points as he won by 2 sets.
Net games won - 1 point per game won in a set won by the player: The same thing applies. Going back to the Roger Federer example, if he had beaten Djokovic 7-6, 3-6, 6-0, 6-4 then he would receive an additional 9 points for the number of games he won each set by (1 point in the first set, 6 in the third and 2 in the fourth).
The 2019 Tournament
As you can see from the above bands, the vast majority of this year's top ranked players are fit and set to feature in this year's French Open. Notable absentees include John Isner who has recently confirmed he will be unable to compete due to a foot injury (and thus has been marked withdrawn in our game) and South Africa's Kevin Anderson who is missing the entire clay court season with an elbow injury.In the Women's Championship, Maria Sharapova will be absent with a shoulder problem and it'll be worth keeping a close eye on Serena Williams and Caroline Wozniacki who both withdrew from last week's Italian open with slight injuries (both are still set to play at Roland Garros).
The bands in our game contain the top 16 available players in the world ahead of either championship and will only change to include other players once certain seeds are knocked out. In the event of a Band One player being knocked out, the top seed from Band Two will replace them while the 17th overall seed would go into Band Two as a replacement and so on.
Though, as we have mentioned, our game is designed to ensure each individual round is important and therefore your picks are likely to vary, it is of course useful to know who the tournament favourites are. Here's a look at the French Open winners from the last 7 years:
As you're likely to already know, the French Open almost belongs to Rafael Nadal. The 'King of Clay' has won this tournament 11 times - he is the only player to have won a Grand Slam tournament that many times in the Open era. In total, Nadal has won 86 French Open matches and lost just 2. The men to have defeated him, Robin Soderling (2009) and Novak Djokovic (2015), should probably receive some kind of trophy simply for beating Nadal. Especially since they both ended up losing in the final in those respective years!
Nadal is of course this year's favourite for the Men's championship with the bookies but whilst he has just won the Italian open, it's worth noting he did lose a match on clay the week before in Madrid against Stefanos Tsitipas. The favourite for the Women's championship is seen to be Simona Halep, with Naomi Osaka and Kiki Bertens not far behind her.
Click here to play the French Open at Superbru
We hope you enjoy playing our French Open game for this year's tournament and feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments! Be sure to get your leagues set up and invite friends and family members to get involved this weekend as the action begins on Sunday.
If A beats B 0:6 0:6 6:3 6:3 6:3 then both players get 12 points.
If A beats B 0:6 0:6 6:4 6:4 6:4 then the loser scores 3 points more than the winner.
Serena scored 14 points winning 2 sets to 1. Three other players in Band 4 have won 2 sets to nil, yet scored less points. I'm wondering if 4 points for a set would be better balanced. Alternatively, game points could also include the sets a player loses.