Ladies and G's - your attention please! Our Hero, Rafael Nadal, won his first tournament since injury last June - beating David Nalbandian 6-2, 6-3 in the Brazil Open final on Sunday. It's his second title in Brazil, having won the event in 2005 as well. Hooray for Rafa!!! I'm so happy for him. It's a pretty nifty trophy too. I LOVE when the smaller tourney's have these enormous trophies. Make your mark, ATP 250's!
It's good to see Rafa biting a trophy again. He came so close last week in his first tourney back at the VTR Open in Chile, but lost the finals in both singles and doubles. Rafa's form is still not great. He's still shaking the rust off as he becomes Match-Ready. Nalbandian was making his first appearance in a final since he was disqualified at Queen's Club last June for kicking an ad board that wound up injuring one of the line judges. Rafa had enough firepower to take control of the match from David. Winning right now is good, but I still don't think he's ready to take a win off of any of the top players, even on clay. He'll get there though! He's moving in the right direction.
Rafa now gets a week off and then plays the Abierto Mexicano Telcel Event on clay in Acapulco. After that the two major tournaments on the horizon are Indian Wells and Miami, both on hard courts. There's a lot of speculation as to whether Rafa will play at both, one of the two or neither. Right now, I'd say skip both and keep strengthening physically and mentally on clay. But Rafa says he's not made a decision yet and is solely focused on Acapulco. That's probably the best strategy for now. And in the meantime, Rafa already has a title trophy for the year! VAMOS!!
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