Monday, August 03, 2015

Nadal wins, third time's the charm

Congratulations to Rafa Nadal for winning the Hamburg t. His win allowed him to exact revenge against his 2015 nemesis, Fabio Fognini, who beat him twice this year. His straight sets win over Fognini in the final was his first win over his Italian opponent in three attempts this year, thus taking home his third title of the year.

Nadal is still not quite there yet in terms of his fighting form, but a title is a title, and he is now trying to win enough points to rejoin the top 8 of the ATP tour and qualify for the year-end championships. He now has 47 clay court titles, just 2 behind the current record of 49 held by Guillermo Vilas. Hopefully, Nadal can tie or break this record.

While he is nowhere near his peak form (check out this video that shows just how phenomenal he was when he was playing well), I still believe he can still win at least one more Grand Slam title before he hangs up his racquet and calls it a career. I also think he's good enough to win 10 more titles. If that happens, he can tie John McEnroe in terms of number of career titles with 77.

*****

While we are on the topic, here's a funny moment during the trophy presentation ceremony. Rafa experiences leg cramps during his awarding speech. :)

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