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.)