Sunday, July 4, 2010

2010 Wimbledon - Semifinals: Still Standing With One To Go!

(Rafa's back where he belongs! The Wimbledon Finals!)

So we're back with Rafa in the Wimby Final! I am actually editing this post as Rafa is playing for the championship. Holiday weekends are like that sometimes. But attention must be paid to his effort in the Semis before we look ahead to the Championship Match. On Friday, Nadal eliminated Britain's Only Hope, Andy Murray, in another hard-fought but straight sets victory - 6-4, 7-6, 6-4. Rafa fought past several tough moments in the match including being down set point 6-5 in the second set tie-break. It was an incredible effort!

"For me was amazing day, very important victory for me, one of the more difficult victories of my career because the opponent was playing well and I need really to play my best tennis to try to win," Rafa said.

I have to say one annoying thing about this match was how it was televised. ESPN showed the first semifinal live where Berdych beat Djokovic. Then they were not allowed to show the Nadal-Murray match because NBC had exclusive coverage of that. Only trouble was the Nadal match was already playing live at Wimbledon well before NBC coverage started at noon. ESPN had to reshow the Serena Williams semifinal in the meantime. So i start monitoring the Nadal-Murray score on SlamTracker. When NBC coverage starts, they don't show it live! They show the match from the beginning. Which I think is lame. I mean, ideally, I'd like to watch the match in its entirety, but not on time delay. I really hate that.

But anyway, congrats to Rafa on his fourth consecutive trip to the Wimbledon Finals! It will be his first time not facing Roger Federer on the other side of the net. He should have a mental edge over Tomas Berdych, who has never played in a Slam Final before. Berdych has some powerful weapons in his game though, and I'm not ready to call it an easy win for him. Rafa's gonna have to stay focused throughout and play super-aggressive. I really hope he gets to bite into that trophy again.

Vamos Rafa!!

1 comment:

lisa said...

rafa didn't mess around, did he! 3 and out... berdych didn't even see those late breaks coming. it was a great win, and how adorable was nadal?? first the somersault, and then in the post-match interview with john mcenroe when he said that hopefully after a few weeks of rest he would be "full of confidence, and full of tennis"--awesome!

(i usually prefer sporting events to be shown live too--but when it's the semifinals of a major, i want to see the whole thing, so i understand why they show it on a delay. they key is NOT looking at the score before watching... just pretend it's live! :)