The Changeover went live on October 28, which -incredibly enough – was only a week ago. It’s been a busy and wonderful first week of existence, and we would love to thank all of you who have stopped by and read any of the 26 posts that we’ve managed to publish throughout these past seven days. We also want to thank you for all the great feedback on Twitter, and all those fantastic retweets. Really, we are most grateful to have such a great group of readers in such a short amount of time.
Welcome to the first Changeover Weekly Reader! Here we will organize the previous week’s posts in a way that you might find useful when you’re trying to catch up on a given tournament or one of our site’s many categories (like the GIFstories or the Changeover Rants). Most of our posts were centered around a specific event (for example, the Paris Masters). Each week we’ll post a quick summary of all the previous week’s events, with embedded links to all the posted pieces:
WTA Championships
The Changeover went live on the day of the final, but before that, Juan José vented about the inexplicable schedule used during the entire week of the tournament, while still recapping both semifinals (No. 1 here, No. 2 here). Lindsay got us excited for the final by inaugurating our GIFstory category and paying tribute to a classic battle between Maria Sharapova and Justine Henin. Juan José then wrote about Serena’s dominating performance in the final.
ATP 500s – Basel and Valencia
Both of these tournaments had fascinating finals, and both were covered in different ways by our writers. Amy recapped the Basel final between Juan Martin del Potro and Roger Federer in GIFs, while Juan José wrote about Alexandr Dolgopolov’s missed opportunity in Valencia. Ahead of the Basel final, Amy chronicled Del Potro’s long and eventful comeback from the wrist injury that kept him off the ATP Tour for nearly a year.
Paris Masters
Lindsay paid tribute to the legendary Julien Benneteau and his quest to win an ATP title. Could it happen in Paris? Juan José wondered if we were in store for something special, just like five years ago with David Nalbandián’s improbable tear through a tough field. Novak Djokovic was stunned by Sam Querrey in his first match, while Andy Murray lost to the little known Jerzy Janowicz, whose improbable run to the final ended up being one of the great stories of the season. Juan José introduced us to Mr. Janowicz and his game after the Murray match, and Amy followed that up with a GIFstory about Janowicz’s quarterfinal win over Janko Tipsarevic. Juan José then recapped Janowic’s win over Simon in the semis, as well as David Ferrer’s win over Michael Llodra, which set up a career-altering final for both men. Ferrer pulled through, nabbing his first M1000 title.
During Paris we also had the first Changeover Music post – which sadly went unheeded by the mediocre tournament DJ.
Fed Cup and Sofia
Expressing disdain for what the WTA calls “The Tournament of Champions”, Lindsay vented with an epic rant full of GIFs. She then previewed the intriguing Fed Cup final, which failed to live up to the billing of her hilarious post. Now that the women’s tennis season is officially over, Lindsay also looked back at 10 moments from the 2012 WTA Season that might have slipped your mind already.
Odds and Ends
Amy gave us a visual representation of how the top 3 ladies of the WTA accumulated their ranking points according to the different surfaces during the year. Lindsay compiled her 10 favorite Stan Wawrinka Retweets, and all three Changeover writers tried to figure out if they should buy or sell Bernard Tomic stock. The three also tried their hand at The Picks, trying to predict the 3 finals for October 28, the Paris semis and Day 1 of FedCup on November 3rd, and the Paris final and Day 2 of FedCup yesterday. So far, Juan José has a slight lead, but Amy and Lindsay are within striking distance.
In case you want to navigate our posts according to the categories we’ve set up, here they are:
- #NeverForget (2 posts)
- Changeover Chats (1 post)
- Changeover Music (1 post)
- Friday Rants (2 posts)
- GIFstories (3 posts)
- How the Match Was Won/Lost (8 posts)
- Player Profiles (3 posts)
- Stats (1 post)
- The Picks (3 posts)
- Tweets (1 post)
- What Not To Do (1 post)
If you want to navigate our posts by author, here you go:
Once again, thank you for all your support and enthusiasm during this week. We couldn’t have done it without you! Please let us know in the comments below if you have any questions or concerns, what you liked and disliked about our first week, and any suggestions you have to make The Changeover better. Many thanks in advance!
Love it! The quote from the immortal Miles Davis won me as well :). I sense that there’s a balanced focus of interesting players over the field instead of just the big names – for example that Benneteau article was really eye-opening for me. I look forward to more writings in that area to come up during the off-season..:)
Thank you qtaro! Yes- we certainly plan on doing many more profiles of under-the-radar players in the future. Thanks so much for reading, glad you enjoyed!