My thoughts on Rafa’s loss to Fernando

Mostly what I can say about this match is it was weird. My observation was that Fernando’s strategy was to hit behind Rafa whenever he could, Rafa’s to pound Fer’s backhand and wait for him to make mistakes. In the first set, Verdasco’s plan was working perfectly, mostly because Rafa was not even attempting to change direction. I have only seen Rafa move (or rather not move) like that once and that was the Australian Open match against David Ferrer when

11 May 2012 | by DebLDecker | 35 Comments

Tuesday in Madrid

I actually made it to the tournament in time to see Rafa practice today. Yea! I watched him for about an hour and 45 minutes with fully charged batteries in my camera. Again, yea! You can see some of the best pictures here. Here’s one:

I love Rafa in this red. I hope it is the French Open Red. I forgot to mention another minus for this tournament is no Nike shop. I was hoping to pick up

8 May 2012 | by DebLDecker | 9 Comments

Monday in Madrid

So the good news is I found out how to get information on the practice schedule. A guy sitting next to me at David Ferrer’s practice handed me a print out that you can get at the information desk. The bad news is that it said that Rafa had already practiced from 10-12. Rats, I was sure he wouldn’t practice before his event for AlmaNadal. But what do I know? So I didn’t get to see Rafa at all today, but I guess a few of you did on TV.

Well, I can share about David’s practice. He was hitting with

8 May 2012 | by DebLDecker | 15 Comments

First Weekend in Madrid

Rafa Siting

If Madrid has a board posting practice schedules, I haven’t found it. So I missed Rafa’s practice on Saturday even though it was on the main stadium. Must have been early before the first match started at 1. I got lucky on Sunday and only knew he was around due to the huge and noisy crowd that was gathering on the platform overlooking the outside courts. I was sitting on the opposite side of court 7 waiting for the next match to begin when the mass appeared.

The main access to courts 4, 5, 6, and 7 and the

7 May 2012 | by DebLDecker | 10 Comments

Dianne at Indian Wells

This was my first trip to Indian Wells. I had heard many great things about this tournament and was excited to see why players and fans loved it so much. Actually, this was my first visit to California and my grown daughter came with me. She’s also a huge tennis fan and had many favorites on her list to see. We arrived in Palm Springs on Friday, March 9th, coming into Palm Springs Airport and got our rental car. The first thing we noticed

23 Mar 2012 | by Dianne S. | 19 Comments

IW: The Draw (and a bloglette)

The draw is up! After a bye in the 1st round, Rafa will face either A Falla or L Mayer. He’s never played either before. Federer is in his half while Murray is in Djokovic’s.

Sorry for the lack of posting. I have the flu and feel horrid. Thanks to a suggestion from @rafannie, I went to a walk-in clinic and got some tamiflu today – hope that will help. At least the tummy part has calmed down.

7 Mar 2012 | by miri | 22 Comments

AO: Alex & Zoe vamos responsibly

Thursday afternoon, we (@zoejrogers & @Beau27) set off to vamos responsibly at the Bacardi event in St Kilda. Friends and family texted alerts and Rafa helpfully gave a time and location for the Bacardi event on his Facebook. Even though we were really busy moving (it literally looks like a moving van vomited into our house!) we definitely didn’t want to miss an opportunity to see Rafa for the first time in 2012. It seemed like a great chance to see an off-court Rafa-in-the-wild.

13 Jan 2012 | by zoe and alex | 8 Comments

RafaLint: January 5th

This? Is cool. It’s a 360 degree view of Rafa and Rog’s candle-light tennis date. Both guys send us New Years wishes and there’s a contest to enter. So, go enter and good luck!

New Babolat promo:

Posted by BABOLATWorld.

Articles:

Racquet Reaction: Nadal d. Youzhny by Hannah Wilks
Nadal finds top gear to beat Youzhny by ESPN
Nadal, Monfils To Square Off In Doha SFs from the ATP
How does Nadal respond to Djokovic? by Simon Cambers (thetennisspace.com)
Nadal wheels out heavy artillery as Federer finds answers to the wind by Richard

5 Jan 2012 | by miri | No Comment

RafaLint: January 4th

Articles:

Racquet Reaction: Nadal d. Gremelmayr by Hannah Wilks (tennis.com)
Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer win by the AP via espn.com
Nadal joins Tsonga in Doha last eight from Eurosport

Videos:

tve report
Hitting with a tot yesterday.
Rafel Nadal comença l’assalt al número 1 amb una raqueta nova from the iB3 (mangle).

Photos:

Check out the gallery on the Doha tournament site for pictures from the player’s party. (The pictures are in a totally unintelligible order.)
The ATP also has a also a nice tournament gallery on their Facebook page. (Who is goosing Rafa?)

Rafa does social media:

Rafa shared

4 Jan 2012 | by miri | 5 Comments

Doha: Aini’s 1st round photos

Aini sends us some more photos – this time from Rafa’s 1st round match.

4 Jan 2012 | by miri | 2 Comments