Category: Random Fun Stuff

Fantasy US Open!

Hello? Anyone here?

It’s time to wipe away the cobwebs and resurrect everyone’s favorite tennis blog! We’ll start with an easy one — the friendly US Open fantasy league contest. As in the past, you’ll choose your fantasy tennis team on the fanslam.us website.

One thing that’s different this year is I created my own contest, under the name LittleYellowBall.blog. No more confusion about which contest to enter–just look for the LittleYellow name. Easy cheesy! (My brother tells me the phrase is “easy peasy,” but what would you rather have, peas or cheese?)

The downside of starting my own contest is that I’m limited to 16 participants. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem since we’ve never even hit double digits. But since the contest is open to anyone — including people who have never even heard of this blog — you could, theoretically, be closed out. Actually, I could get closed out, since I haven’t made my picks yet, either.

The US Open released both the men’s and women’s draws today, but as of this writing, only the men’s side of the tournament is posted on the fanslam site. I’ll add the women’s contest as soon as it’s available.

Not sure how fantasy tennis works? Check out my French Open Fantasy League post for a not-at-all-snarky explanation. (Of course, disregard the instructions on which contest to enter!)

The contest winner will get bragging rights and a sleeve of the environmentally friendly Triniti tennis ball! (What’s a Triniti ball? Find out here.)

Good luck!!

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French Open Fantasy League!

Fantasy tennis is back, baby! Get busy picking your teams. You have until Sunday–when the French Open begins–before you’re shut out of all the fun. I don’t want to hear any of your lame-o excuses this time around. Excuses such as:

“I wanted to enter, but I didn’t know where to go! Wah!”

Go to fanslam.us. Make an account, if you haven’t already.

“There were too many contests–I didn’t know which one to enter! Wah!”

We’re entering the two contests marked “Enter free” under the status column. There’s one for the men and one for the women.

“I didn’t understand the rules. Wah!”

It’s really not that hard.

  • You have a pot of money, called your salary cap. You get to buy eight players with that money. Higher ranked players cost more.
  • You don’t have to pick the champion to win. You win by accumulating the most points.
  • Points are awarded based on what percentage of match points a player won. So if Nadal beats Djokovic 6-1, 6-2, 6-1 and you have Djokovic on your team roster, you’re not getting many points. But if Nadal beats him 7-6, 7-6, 7-6, you could get almost as many points with Djokovic on your roster as with Nadal. (And if you have both men on your roster, you get all 100 points no matter who wins.)
  • Once a player loses, he or she doesn’t accumulate any more points. (Duh.)

“I don’t follow tennis closely enough to know who all the players are. Wah wah wah!”

Who cares? It’s free. Pick random people, using up as much of your salary cap as you can. Weird things can happen. Just look at last year’s US Open finalists. Nobody could have predicted that.

I’ll be picking my teams under the name LittleYellow. Before the tournament begins, you have to let me know, via the comment section, the name you’re playing under to get a shot at winning the coveted can of Triniti tennis balls.

There will be only one winner for each contest. You’re competing against whoever enters this LYB subset of bettors. So if you end up with more points than I have but fewer than loyal LYB reader Martha, you lost and you get squat.

Good luck!!!

(No, I haven’t forgotten about the May challenge of ladder drills. I’m making it a June challenge. Maybe even late-June.)

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Australian Open Fantasy Tennis

I woke up to the news that Novak Djokovic has been kicked out of Australia. I can’t pretend to be sad about that. Not only does it remove a major hurdle for Rafa to win his second Australian Open (although I still think that’s unlikely), but it clarifies the men’s draw for fantasy tennis!

Want to play? You have only a few more hours to pick your fantasy team, so put down your dust mop and get busy!

Go to FanSlam.us. After you log in, you’ll see a long list of contests, most of which are marked “private.” Scroll down past all that, and you’ll come to a second grid marked “Fanslam Calendar: Upcoming Tournaments.” The contests you want are the first two listed, marked “Enter Free.”

You can find the rules on the FanSlam site or in last year’s blog post, Fantasy Tennis Is Here.

In the past, I’ve tried to set up a contest within a contest, with limited (actually, zero) success. I’ll keep trying, though, because one of these days someone will surprise me. If you want to compete within the LittleYellowBall community, set up your fantasy team(s) on FanSlam. Then return here and post your team roster(s) in the comment section. (Yes, there is a comment section. Keep scrolling.)

It’s no use coming to me after the tournament ends, claiming you were player “FedererFan1” on FanSlam and, hey look at that, you just happened to finish in first place. If your picks aren’t posted on LittleYellowBall before the first serve is struck (tonight at 7, EST), you’re out of luck.

In the event of more than one person entering this contest with me (as if), the person with the best result wins. There will be only one winner for each draw.

Here are my picks for the men:

My picks for the men
  • Nadal
  • Auger-Aliassime
  • Bautista Agut
  • Taylor Fritz
  • Alcaraz Garcia
  • De Minaur
  • James Duckworth
  • Andy Murray (a bargain at $5,000!)

And for the women:

My picks for the women
  • Kontaveit
  • Badosa
  • Halep
  • Gauff
  • Anisimova
  • Cornet
  • Keys
  • Kvitova

Winner gets a can of tennis balls—which, of course, will be Triniti balls.

Have fun!!

4

Famous Tennis Tykes: A Quiz!

Normally we’d be having oodles of fun today with our worst-dressed fashion face-off. But then I got to thinking: Is this really who we want to be as tennis fans? After everything we’ve been through during this ongoing pandemic nightmare, shouldn’t we focus our energies on building each other up? Supporting each other through our travails, sartorial or otherwise? Have we learned nothing?

A blog is a powerful platform, one I should be using to further the causes of self-esteem, mental health, and general fashion tolerance. No longer will we be poking fun at people for outfits they had no hand in choosing. From now on, this blog will be dedicated to positivity and warm, fuzzy feelings.

(Also, I couldn’t find any worst-dressed nominees for Wimbledon. Such is the drawback of a dress code. We’ll revisit these high-minded ideals once the US Open starts.)

But fear not—we still have interactive photographic content to, um, interact with. Behold this nifty quiz, featuring our favorite stars’ warm and fuzzy childhood photos brazenly ripped from the internet. (If this blog gets shut down, you’ll know why.)

Enjoy–and if you like it, please share it by email or social media! Continue reading “Famous Tennis Tykes: A Quiz!” →

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Fantasy Wimbledon!

Just a quick post to let you know that the free fantasy league for Wimbledon is now open for entries. You have all weekend to figure out your teams, so don’t come crying to me next week that you missed out on the fun.

Here’s the link to my original post on the fantasy league, where I describe the process: Fantasy Tennis Is Here!

Here’s the link for setting up your women’s team: https://www.fanslam.us/contest_teams.php?contest=626

And here’s the link for the men:

https://www.fanslam.us/contest_teams.php?contest=625

Should we have our own internal contest? Of course we should. Post your team rosters in the comments section before play begins on Monday, June 28. Winners will get (what else?) a new can of tennis balls!

 

 

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My Rafa Dream: A Professional Weighs In

This is too good not to share.

A friend and LYB reader forwarded my Rafa dream post to a fellow tennis player and psychologist, Beth Freed. In response, Beth offered up her professional analysis of the dream, starting with my half-assed remark in the comments section about flip-flops signifying an abrupt change of mind:

Continue reading “My Rafa Dream: A Professional Weighs In” →

3

My Mysterious Rafa Dream

If you’ve been paying attention to this blog, you know I have a celebrity crush on Rafa. (Every marriage establishes its own set of rules. In mine, I’m allowed one celebrity crush. My husband isn’t allowed any.)

So maybe it isn’t surprising that Rafa appeared in my dream last week. Sounds hot, right? Alas, as with so much in middle age, it turned out to be a major disappointment.

Here’s what happened: A friend and I buy tickets to a tennis tournament. For some reason—covid, maybe?—few people are in attendance. We score courtside seats in rickety metal bleachers, looking right along the baseline where Rafa is playing.

A ball rolls to the side of the court nearest me. There isn’t a ball kid in sight, so I decide to be helpful. I stand up, and it’s here that we get our first good look at what I’m wearing: a floppy pink hat, shorts intended for a much younger person, and orange flip-flops. I climb down from the bleachers as gracefully as one can in flip-flops and a big hat and noisily flap my way over to the ball. I toss it to Rafa. It’s a terrible toss, much as it would be in real life. It’s way off the mark and dribbling along the ground. Continue reading “My Mysterious Rafa Dream” →

9

On GOATs and STOATs

The Australian Open is officially underway, which means Fashion Face-offs are right around the corner. A concerned reader advised me to write a couple of “warm-up” posts before tackling the face-offs. I guess it’s been so long I might hurt myself. So here’s a nice, gentle stretch of a post to ease back into things…

Last night was kind of crazy, wasn’t it? The Super Bowl and the Australian Open starting at the same time. It was hard to know what to watch—there were a lot of GOAT storylines between those two events. Continue reading “On GOATs and STOATs” →

8

Acronyms, Masks, and Half-Assed Musings

It’s a LittleYellowBall smorgasbord today. A tennis tapas, if you will. A buffet of thoughts, none of which merits its own blog post but which together just might add up to a crunchy and satisfying blog salad. Continue reading “Acronyms, Masks, and Half-Assed Musings” →

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Aces for Australia

Could I be turning into a Nick Kyrgios fan?

Not of his tennis—I was always a fan of that. But of him as a person. The temperamental Aussie may be finally winning me over.

I imagine he’s won over quite a number of people recently. You’ve probably heard of his pledge to donate $200 for every ace he hits during the Australian tennis season to support victims of his country’s devastating wildfires. That’s a hefty pledge for someone who serves as many aces as Kyrgios does.

Under that brash exterior lies a heart of gold. Meanwhile, I sit behind my iPad snarking about everybody’s clothes. Kyrgios is putting me to shame. Continue reading “Aces for Australia” →

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