Tennis Atlantic

Nadal makes it 8: ATP Monte Carlo Recap

By Steen Kirby, TennisEastCoast.com

Rafael Nadal set another record today capping off another excellent run at the Monte Carlo country club with a straights sets victory over Novak Djokovic in the final 6-3 6-1. In doing so, Rafa won his 8th straight Monte Carlo Masters tournament and becomes the first player to win the same title 8 times in a row and the first player to win any title 8 times total. Once again, he showed his dominance on the clay.

It was an easy week for Rafa, who showed his knees were still capable of holding up. He took out Jarkko Nieminen in a battle of lefties in the 2nd round, Kazakh qualifier Mikhail Kukushkin in the 3rd round, Stanislas Wawrinka in the quarters and home favorite Gilles Simon in the semis before taking out Djokovic to win. Simon actually played some of his best tennis but still did not stand a chance against Rafa. Earlier in the week, he had beaten both Janko Tipsarevic and his compatriot Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the quarterfinals.

As for Novak, he overcame not only the often blustery conditions in Monte Carlo but personal tragedy as well, as he was informed that his grandfather, Vladmir, had passed away just before his 3rd round match with Alexandr Dolgopolov. After being informed of the news on the practice court and breaking down in tears, he chose to continue and play Dolgopolov later that day.

After gutting out a 3 set victory in what was obviously an extremely emotional match for him he gave a fitting tribute to his grandfather raising his hands to the sky.

He continued his emotional play the remainder of the week taking out Robin Haase and Tomas Berdych before losing to Rafa in the final.

Dolgopolov righted the ship this week winning 2 good matches over Juan Ignacio Chela and Bernard Tomic in a rematch of their match at this year’s Aussie open.

Berdych played some fine tennis as well, taking out Kei Nishikori and Andy Murray before falling to Djokovic. His comments in the press conference after the Murray match caused a bit of a stir as he said “Andy is missing some small thing and that’s probably why he’s fourth”. Murray took out Viktor Troicki and Julien Benneteau before falling to Berdych.

Benneteau was forced to retire against Murray after he fell in almost exactly the same spot Juan Monaco had fallen the previous day. Something was clearly up with that spot on the court resulting in two injuries.

The Bryan Brothers took the Monte Carlo doubles final over Max Mirnyi and Daniel Nestor.

The ATP World Tour now heads to Barcelona, Spain and Bucharest, Romania followed by another Master series event in Madrid.

On one other note, Paolo Lorenzi and Sam Querrey will play in the final of the challenger in Sarasota today.