Well here is my late entry on the 2013 Mutua Madrid Open men's and ladies finals so I will keep it fairly brief and get on with it...
So starting with the ladies final which was between Serena Williams, the defending champion and Maria Sharapova, who were both fighting it out for the No.1 spot, Serena to cling on to it and Maria to take it off her. But given the fact that Maria hadn't beaten Serena since 2004, it was going to be a mighty tough ask for the Russian to get past her. And as predicted the match itself turned to be yet another straight forward victory for Serena, as Maria did her usual capitulation on serve, double faulting, letting the unforced errors pile up, as Serena took the first set with great ease. In the 2nd, Maria managed to get a break on Serena's serve, but was unable to captilise on it as Serena broke back and at 5-4, with Sharapova serving to make it 5-5, she faltered for the last time and Serena closed the deal with her successful title defence win in 6-1, 6-4.
This was a pretty disappointing final and it was to be entirely expected that once Maria couldn't fight her was past her nemesis, and its a pity that their rivalry isn't more balanced, which is something that is missing in the women's game as it is. The ladies game, as good as it is, does lack great rivalries, and there are some interesting rivalries out there, but no truly great ones like in the men's game, where we have four superb players go at it (i.e. Rog, Andy, Nole and Raf), and they all can bounce off each other brilliantly when they play (no pun intended). But the ladies game desperately needs a great rivalry just now, and the only one that might fit that bill is Serena's rivalry with Victoria Azarenka, as the Belarusian is about the only player that can really go toe to toe with Serena in the ladies game at the moment. However Azarenka has been out with injury and has just made her comeback in Madrid, where she lost her first match of the year, and it might be a slow pick up for her to gather momentum, but hopefully when Victoria get's back on form, we might just get treated to the rivalry we all want to see between her and Serena.
Regardless of that though Serena deserves credit for pulling out another title win, especially as she had gotten to a slow start in the tournament, and she now has 50 titles to her career, and she remains undoubtedly the best player in the world and one of the greats in the game. Whether or not any can knock her off the top spot remains to be seen, but for now its going to mighty tough for anyone to touch her, and she surely will be a favourite for the French open (where surely she will do better than her first round dramatic exit last year).
So now onto the men's final, which was an unlikely match up, as we had Rafa take on the Swiss no.2, Stanislas Wawrinka, who has been in great form since the start of the season, and especially in the clay court swing. However if their head to head was anything to go by then it would indicate that before the match, Rafa would be the overwhelming favourite as Rafa has never lost to Stan in all their previous eight meetings, and not even dropped a set! And this meeting turned out to be no different as Rafa was in great form, playing probably one of his best matches of the year so far in terms of his aggression and precision. Stan on the other hand faltered badly on serve in the first set and he kept overpressing his backhand, making unforced errors, as he was broken twice in the opening set. In the 2nd set, Stan did a better job at holding serve but at 3-3, he was broken with ease by Rafa, who went on to confidently serve out the match to grab his 55th career title, and 40th clay court title with a 6-2. 6-4 victory.
Again this was a rather underwhelming match and throughout Rafa was in no danger of being broken by Wawrinka, who to be fair was up against the worst opponent imaginable on a clay court. Regardless of his loss though, Stan has shown terrific form so far this season and he has already beaten four players inside the top four on clay alone, Murray, Ferrer, Tsonga and Berdych, so come the French I think its safe to say that Stan will be a real danger to the rest of the draw. As for Rafa well his record on clay speaks for itself and in Madrid has gone from strength to strength as he is starting to look like he is getting back to his best form. And I think come the time we hit Roland Garros, Rafa will be back on peak form, like he was last year, and I can still actually see him winning an 8th RG title this year as well, as Djokovic is his only real threat on a clay, and while Nole stands a really good chance, I think in the end Rafa will win through. But we can wait for it when it comes.
So that's it for now, next up is the Rome Open, which is another 1000 Masters ATP tour event and a WTA Premier 5 event for the men and ladies tours respectively, which is on this week, and we should see more great tennis no doubt, which I will cover later this week.
And with that I shall leave it right there!
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