Picks Game - Wrap up

Once more, with feeling.

A tournament spinning out of control, rescued (in the memories of this fan) by some dramatic quarter finals, a classic underdog meets returning heroine Women's Final, and a clash of the titans Men's final that had sportswriters and fans reaching for the superlatives section in the thesaurus.

Still, all this is covered elsewhere.  How did we do with our Picks?

Not bad, in the end.  With moderate confidence, the Tribe called both Finals correctly (75% and 74% for Venus Williams and Federer, respectively).  The Tribe also went 3/4 in the semis - no surprises there, but a huge collective black eye, with 100% (!) of the Tribe expecting Justine Henin to make the final.

Overall, the Tribe correctly predicted 47 out of 61 matches for 77%, just under the 51 for 61 performance at Roland Garros (84%).  I believe this is statistically insignificant (I will check), so I'd say the Tribe did about as well in the two tournaments.

Interestingly, the Tribe actually did better than the "naive" strategy of just picking the top ranked player.  The naive strategy, or NS, was right about the coinflip Monfils - Davydenko (51% went for year of Gael), and 55% picked Hewitt to knock off Djokovic.

But 96% of us were right in taking Hewitt to get past Canas, and we also picked Tsonga to get past Lopez and Baghdatis to knock out Davydenko.

And after taking Sharapova by 74% over Venus Williams (O ye of little faith!), the Tribe then picked Williams all the way to the crown, with 63%, 83% and 75% favoring her to beat the higher ranked Kuznetsova, Ivanovic and Bartoli on her way to a fourth crown.

Individuals also did very well.  Before I talk about the top performers, I have to acknowledge that it was extremely difficult because of schedule changes and rain delays to stay up with the Picks Game.  One was never quite sure, for long periods of the tournament, who would be playing when.  My thanks to all who stuck with the game, exhibiting great good humor as well as dedication along the way.

Assuming that my tally is correct, we have a winner - kiwibee, whose 46/15 just edged Beckham's 45/16.  Here's your final Leaderboard:

In the individual tournaments, these Pickers stood out:

We had two upset picks: kiwibee was alone in picking Tipsarevic over Gonzalez (R32), and Arvydas correctly saw that Bartoli would defeat Jankovic (R16).

Nominations for awards (one per person):

Overall: kiwibee.  Men's:  Celia.  Women's:  Matt Zemek.  Upset: Arvydas.

Thanks to all for keeping the faith and playing.  See you next time.

-- Andrew