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Thursday, May 28, 2009

ROUND 3 NEXT FOR RAFAEL NADAL AT ROLAND GARROS 09, GERALDINE PAGE AND OBAMA'S PRIORITIES

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Rafael Nadal won his Round 2 match May 27, 2009 with Teimuraz Gabashvili
6-1, 6-4, 6-2
and will play Australian Lleyton Hewitt May 29, Friday in Round 3.

The Order of Play will come out later today.

PICTURES here

I am sorry ~ I don't have time to retrieve the pictures at this time.
You can also find them at the two Rafa fan forums

More Rafa News below in this post

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A Love Once Known Never Dies

One Love
to last forever
in a heart
that suffers
quietly

While the fire of love goes on burning for a lifetime

Written by Sandra Hammel
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This is my favorite scene in this movie
A Trip to Bountiful
Click the HQ in the lower right corner to see it with optimum clarity.
I am nervous about it being at Youtube, so I may not leave it up long.
Uploaded by ilovemylifesblog

Mrs. Carrie Watts
at 1:31 speaks these words...

"I wasn't in love with my husband...

'course I didn't lie to my husband. I told him I didn't love him...that I'd admired him...which I did. But I didn't love him.

I'd never love anybody, but
Ray
John
Murray,
as long as I lived. And I didn't. And I couldn't help it..."

A Trip to Bountiful was written by Horton Foote who passed away March 4, 2009
Mr. Foote's Bio

Geraldine Page was born November 22, 1924
In 1985, she became the first woman to receive seven Oscar nominations for acting without winning the award. She was awarded the Oscar for the eighth nomination for this role March 14, 1986. She died June 13, 1987. At the time of Ms. Page's death she had been ill with kidney disease and high blood pressure.

Geraldine Page's Bio

Rebecca De Mornay Bio

Geraldine Page Wins Oscar for this role

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More on Rafa
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Rafa's answers the press' questions after the round 2 match
Uploaded by pennyleevelika

NEWS

RAFA NADAL: FIRST THING FIRST, "CONGRATULATIONS BARCELONA"

May 28, 2009

"I am writing [these words] after the Champions League final. All of us staying here have watched it here at the hotel lobby and the first thing I want to do is congratulate all the Barcelona team. What a fantastic team. The closest thing to perfection!!!. And I say this first since it looks like this is the only thing people were really caring today was about the football match. Sure I wanted to watch it, you know I love football and I watch a lot but it was kind of funny to have questions in the press conference about me wanting to change the match today to play earlier," said Rafa on his blog today for Times Online.

Read more


Solving the Riddle

By PAUL MACPHERSON
Published: May 25, 2009

Rafael Nadal has suffered just five clay-court losses in five years. As the four-time defending champion returns to Roland Garros, are there lessons to be learned from those defeats? Or is the Spaniard a lock to again go all the way in Paris?

Rafael Nadal is a man accustomed to getting what he wants or, more to the point, taking what he earns. There is nothing he wants more than a record-breaking fifth consecutive title at Roland Garros, where he is one of the hottest favourites in Grand Slam history. As was the case with Pete Sampras and Roger Federer during their dominant runs at Wimbledon, it’s difficult to build a cogent argument detailing how Nadal can be beaten in Paris. But, as history shows, the Sampras and Federer runs did eventually end.

Does anyone have the mental and physical strength required to beat Nadal at Roland Garros this year? Tattooed in players’ consciousness is Nadal’s jaw-dropping clay-court run since 2005: 150 wins and five losses, coming into Paris. Collectively, the victories tell an amazing tale with no shortage of stunning records and statistics. But when debating whether Nadal will be beaten in Paris this year, here is all you need to know: Nadal boasts a perfect 45-0 record in best-of-five-set matches on clay, has only twice been pushed to a fifth set and never at Roland Garros, where he comes into the 2009 event with an unbeaten 28-0 record.

There’s not much comfort in those numbers for players hoping to upset the Spaniard this year. But what about the five losses in five years: Can any lessons be gleaned from Nadal’s defeats? In trying to identify a game plan to beat the Spaniard, it could be argued that other factors had as much, or more, to do with the five losses than did the play or tactics of the winner.

It may sound harsh to deny Roger Federer full credit for his highly-satisfying win over Nadal in the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 Madrid final earlier this month, but as well as the Swiss played, Nadal clearly was not at his best physically after toiling for more than four hours the day before to beat Novak Djokovic in a brutal semi-final. It certainly wasn’t the same Nadal as the one who handed Federer a 6-1, 6-3, 6-0 loss in the 2008 Roland Garros final. Having said that, Federer played very smart, using the elevation in Madrid to his advantage, attacking relentlessly, keeping points short and serving big. “Playing on clay at a different altitude… gives you opportunities to play aggressive,” said Federer, adding that “it’s not so easy to hit passing shots because at times on other surfaces when it´s so slow it´s almost impossible to come to the net [against Nadal].

“We both had trouble controlling the ball, because the points were kept shorter it was better for my game and that’s why I won today. I saw some of those things against Djokovic, that he was struggling in the beginning to control his serve and probably Djokovic should have finished him off in two.”

Perhaps it was Djokovic, who also took a set from Nadal just weeks earlier in Monte-Carlo, who revealed a game plan that could work against the Spaniard, even in Paris, without the benefit of altitude. It worked well enough to earn Djokovic three match points in Madrid before Nadal won 3-6, 7-6(5), 7-6(9).

Taking an opposing view to Andy Murray, who caused Nadal some discomfort in Monte-Carlo with high, bouncy topspin, Djokovic instead worked his way into a winning position by hitting flat and deep, making it harder for the left-hander to run around his backhand. Hitting low and deep also denied Nadal the time and bounce to rip his most vicious topspin forehands. Djokovic also flouted conventional wisdom by hitting wide to the Nadal forehand – a wing most players avoid like the plague. But what’s the point of consistently hitting to Nadal’s backhand? If the rally goes long enough eventually he’ll find a ball to run around and open up the court like a can of peaches.

Willing to hit to the forehand court, Djokovic reduced Nadal’s ability to run around his backhand and unleash his favourite forehand. And well-executed blows wide to the forehand that took Nadal out of court left the backhand court exposed, allowing the Serb to hit clean winners. Taking a different approach to Federer, Djokovic was also willing to hang with Nadal in extended baseline rallies. From the club player to the ATP World Tour pro, when an underdog goes up against a more fancied opponent there is a tendency to play too aggressively in the belief that the only way to win is to take chances on every point. Despite never having beaten Nadal on clay, Djokovic was often willing to dig in from the baseline and not give away free points. Indeed, Nadal threw in 50 unforced errors in the match, including 11 unforced forehand errors in the first set. But don’t expect to see those numbers again anytime soon.

“I’m very disappointed that I can play this well and still not win a match,” Djokovic said. “I think that I’ve played my best tennis on this surface.” Despite pushing Nadal that close, Djokovic was unable to identify what he could have done differently on the match points he held. “If I knew I would probably win,” he quipped in exasperation.

Former Roland Garros champion Gaston Gaudio and Russian Igor Andreev, two of the four players to have recorded clay-court wins over Nadal in the past five years, tell DEUCE that they are doubtful that anyone can beat Nadal at Roland Garros this year.

“On clay Rafa is almost unbeatable,” says Gaudio, who is the only player to have beaten Nadal three times on clay, but not since 2005. “He is in great shape physically. It is hard to predict who could beat him, but I don’t think there is anyone that could do that at the moment. He is pretty much invincible on clay. I don’t really know [how you go about beating him]. He has no weaknesses. You have to attack and hope not to make many mistakes. I beat him when he was not at the top.”


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DO ONE THING TO HELP END THE GENOCIDE IN DARFUR

CALL

1-800-GENOCIDE

and

MORE OPPORTUNITIES...

Write President Obama

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/


You can also call or write to the President:

The White House
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Washington, DC 20500

Comments to President Obama:

202 - 456-1111

The White House comment line is available

9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. weekdays


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To call the USA Secretary of State

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