Re(1): ATTENTION BIGMUCHO Posted on June 13, 2026 at 10:45:40 AM by BigMucho
Perhaps, and in any event it's a beautiful thing. Also on Friday, Txanika won a qualifying partido that will now allow him to fully participate in the upcoming Markina Grand Slam tournament. The cream rises!
The problem with unfair player selection biases for the three elite "Summer League" tournaments appears to reside on the French side of the border (Cadet?) where those tournaments will be played rather than being a Goico issue in Spain. I've observed that not only was the selection of players invited to try to qualify for the "Summer League" extremely dubious, but the qualifying rounds were themselves structurally rigged to favor the players that the French jai alai establishment is trying to promote, with the most obvious example being their young great white hope Caparrus.
For example, Caparrus just successfully qualified to compete in the "Summer League" tournaments whereas Atain failed to qualify. But notably, in three of the qualifying rounds Atain got paired with the two worst front court players, Bonnin and Etcheberry. By contrast, Caparrus never got paired with either Bonnin or Etcheberry a single time in any of his five qualifying rounds, and instead only played with the best front courters available. Surely this was no accidental luck of the draw -- rather, Atain got Bonned for the benefit of Caparrus.
[I may be mistaken, but I think I read somewhere that Alex Goitia might not have been invited to play in or qualify for the "Summer League" tournaments. If that is true, it would be even more egregious than the Argoitia/Txanika situation that I've been complaining about given that Alex appears to be one of the top five best front courters in the world.]
The fans and the sport deserve to see a field comprised of all the best players competing against one another in these tournaments rather than just some of them. Replies:
Tiger's Jai-Alai Chalk Talk
