No Super Mario today
Rafa took on Mario Ancic in the third round of the BNP Paribas Open today. Ancic’s ranking has dropped horribly thanks to a prolonged bout of mono, but he’s doing his best to work his way back up and got off to a good start in this tournament. But it’s one thing playing against lower ranked players and another playing against the top guys. Rafa was smacking the ball and looking confident as he rolled over Ancic: 6-2, 6-2.
Hello, IW with your windy and lip-scorching sun
Rafa worked his way through Schuettler and some horrid wind to win his first match at Indian Wells: 6-4 6-4. Not that I got to see it. I was in the desert taking pictures of old, abandoned and rusty things. Hey, the day was sold out and a girl has to keep herself entertained. For those who got to watch it, what do you think? How was he playing? Was the play good enough to out-weigh the horribleness of the shorts?
Indian Wells draw
Ah…finally time for another RafaDraw before some RafaTennis. The draw for Indian Wells is out. Rafa’s in the bottom half of the draw. Rafa’s first match (in the second round) will be against a qualifier. The first seed he might come up against is Benneteau.
Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s back to practice he goes
Rafa was back on the practice courts on Monday, February 15th. iB3 was there to give us some video and an interview.
The agonknee of defeat
In a highly anticipated match-up that felt more like a slam semi than a quarterfinal, Rafa took on #4 Andy Murray today in Melbourne. They came out swinging and playing high-quality no-holds barred tennis. The match was tight, but Murray was out-playing Rafa who was having trouble keeping his shots in the court. And then…the knee. Rafa hurt his right knee at the end of the second set and then aggravated it further in the third. He tried to keep going, but… Rafa’s Australian Open comes to an end with just as many, if not more, questions about the state
Ace this!
Rafa’s opponent for his fourth round Australian Open match was the hard serving freaky-tall #39 Ivo Karlovic. This was their first meeting in a major, but Rafa went into it with a 2-0 head-to-head record. But for someone who likes to gain rhythm in matches and has been having problems with his return of serve, this is a nightmare match up. Or, so we thought. Rafa played a smart game and was finally getting a groove on his returns. He was stepping up into them and it was a lovely thing to see. Rafa is through to the next round
Squeaker
Rafa took on #26 Phillipp Kohlschreiber in the third round of the Australian Open tonight. It was the forth meeting between the two with Rafa only dropping 2 sets in their prior meetings. He got off to a shaky start tonight – firing off 17 unforced errors in the first set – but managed to work his way into the match until the bottom fell out again in set 3. They traded brakes in the 4th and I had no idea who was going to win. But Rafa worked his “not playing well but still eeking it out” magic and
No lucko for Lacko
For his second match at the Australian Open, Rafa played #75 Lukas Lacko of the Slovak Republic. Lacko’s ranking has been on a huge rise this year, but he was a bundle of nerves and hitting error after error. Rafa, on the other hand, was looking good. Still not hitting as deep or moving with as much confidence as last year, but he’s definitely improving. His error rate was a bit high, but I got the feeling that was because he was going for shots more – taking advantage of the lop-sided match. Rafa’s through to the 3rd round: 6-2,
Well, hello Australia
After the fun and good will of the Hit for Haiti, Rafa got the serious part of his Australian Open started by playing #70 Peter Luczak. This was their first meeting since a 2003 qualifying match (Hamburg) that Rafa won handily (6-2, 6-1). The first set of today’s match was pretty tight – tighter than I thought it would be – until the tiebreaker which Rafa wonn 7-0. After that, the steamroll was fully engaged and Rafa roared through set 2 to take it 6-1. Rafa broke in the first game of set 3, but Luczak did his best to
Australian Open draw
The draw for the 2010 Australian Open was announced today even if the promised live streaming feed was late and caused the tennis twitterverse to go into an all-caps fretful frenzy. Then, when they finally did stream, it kept buffering so that I couldn’t hear the line numbers and players. To make it worse, they didn’t show the draw sheet on the screen…so it was virtually impossible to follow. JMac’s shirt didn’t help matters. Bottom line: the other main seed
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