RAFAEL NADAL IS IN BEIJING AFTER CINCINNATI

The above pictures of Rafael Nadal are from the Semi-Final match in Cincinnati August 2, 2008.
Novak Djokovic won 6-1, 7-5.
The pictures are from Daylife,
but sometimes Daylife pictures are really from Getty.
Just hard to know who to give credit, although I try.

Rafa had played in the final match of 8 of the last 10 matches he played in. He won 7 of those final matches, including Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Hamburg, Roland Garros, Queens Club, Wimbledon, Toronto. All three surfaces: clay, grass and hard. He lost in Miami.

Rafa was tired, very tired in Cincinnati. He played more tennis than any other competitor because he won the most matches.

Now, he is in Beijing, to play for his country of Spain.

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Uploaded by niinzniinz
Rafael Nadal and Tommy Robredo arrive in Beijing
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Uploaded by luneworld
Rafael Nadal and Uncle Tony in Beijing
Uncle Tony interviewed and playing pool with Rafa

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Uploaded by luneworld
Rafa interviewed

RAFAEL NADAL MAKES TENNIS SPECIAL. ATP LIVE STREAMING UNRELIABLE

When TV doesn't air tennis matches, or the streaming stalls or completely doesn't work - and the "paid for" sites are the most unreliable - youtube is the place to see the sport of tennis. And customer service on ATP's live streaming site is not that helpful to the individual. Recently so many fan-uploaded tennis matches or parts of matches have been removed from Youtube. My personal opinion is that this hurts tennis. The money that the tennis copyright holders are trying to save for themselves to make surely isn't diminished by uploading tennis to Youtube or other similar sites. We want to see it live, but failing that, Youtube tennis viewing promotes the sport, peaks and nurtures interests and only helps those who want more people to tune into tennis so that they can make money.

Youtube in effect is free advertising for the corporate tennis administrations. But they delete the tennis youtube videos continually thinking they are protecting their money-making ventures. Roland Garros deleted videos continually during the French Open.

Rethinking their philosophy and method to make money and allowing videos to be put on Youtube and Daily Motion should be allowed so that more people are brought into the viewing tennis population.

I actually have bought the passes to ATP (which most of the time doesn't work) and Wimbledon. Wimbledon by far is the better. I couldn't get the live matches (probably because of too much "traffice"), but the downloads of entires matches are fantastic. The ATP was having technical difficulty at the Toronto final last Sunday, so the entire match was unavailable. And ESPN was knocked out by a thunderstorm in my area.

ATP doesn't upload entire matches of the current tournaments, just selected matches of the past. And of those, I have always had difficulty getting these matches to play all the way to the end.

Yesterday, I was so surprised to be able to view the entire match on the ATP site of Rafael Nadal v Nicolas Lapentti. This only proves it is not my computer. It probably means that since the match was televised the traffic on the ATP site was so much less and I was able to to have success. ATP is better than TV in that the change overs are shown and there are no commercial breaks.

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Rafael Nadal beat Nicolas Lapentti in Cincinnati August 1, 2008 7-6(3), 6-1 and secures the number 1 position.
Uploaded by tennis24gr

A NEW TOP NAME IN TENNIS BELONGS TO A GENTLEMAN NAMED RAFAEL NADAL

Rafa Nadal celebrates his Quarter Final win in Cincinnati
August 1, 2008
over worthy opponent Nicolas Lapentti 7-6(3), 6-1

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Revisiting this Roger Federer versus Rafael Nadal Wimbledon Promotional
clip with the perspective of Rafael Nadal becoming number one.
Uploaded by chuygtz14

El pais photo credit above

Rafael Nadal's Points Breakdown

Rafael Nadal's Tournaments Record

RAFAEL NADAL REACHES THE MOUNTAINTOP OF PROFESSIONAL TENNIS RANKING

Who has won on clay, grass and hard court and just became Number One?

Rafael Nadal

Most recently in 2008 Rafa won
Toronto, Wimbledon, Queens Club, French Open - Roland Garros,
Barcelona, Monte Carlo, Hamburg





Nicolas Lapentti lost the Quarter Final match to Rafael Nadal August 1, 2008
7-6 (3), 6-1

Lapentti played magnificently until Rafa won the tie break, then Rafa took on unbeatable proportions.

Congratulations to Rafa for becoming Number One tonight.

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Quarter Final Spainard Rafael Nadal defeats Ecuadorian Nicolas Lapentti 7-6(3), 6-1 August 1, 2008 in Cincinnati (Mason), Ohio

Rafael Nadal NUMBER ONE by way of points accumulated

Rafa's next opponent in Cincinnati
Novak Djokovic
August 2, 2008 at 7:00 p.m.

VAMOS CAMPEON - RAFA!

Photo credits: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images North America
except the one at the top, which is a Sports Illustrated photo

Nadal to surpass Federer at the top

Source: ukpress

Rafael Nadal will replace Roger Federer at the top of the world rankings this month after the second-seeded Spaniard moved past Nicolas Lapentti 7-6 (7/3) 6-1 in the quarter-finals of the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters on Friday.

Nadal has won his last five tournaments and if the 22-year manages to claim the championship at this hardcourt event, he will overtake Roger Federer as the number one player in the world.

The top-ranked player for a record 235 weeks, Federer had the opportunity to keep Nadal at bay a bit longer had he reached the semi-finals here, but a third-round loss to Ivo Karlovic on Thursday ended that possibility. By reaching the semi-finals, Nadal will become number one on August 18 and he is guaranteed to move atop the rankings on August 11 by finishing as the runner-up.

Nadal, who is an ATP-best 64-7 this season and is riding a 32-match win streak, connected on 67 percent of his first serves and saved all three break points. He had two break opportunities and capitalised on both. Nadal will meet third-seeded Novak Djokovic in a semi-final clash. Djokovic downed Latvia's Ernests Gulbis 6-3 6-4, in the quarters.

"I thought that I was serving much better, and day after day I'm getting stronger in the segment of my game, which is really important coming up to the final stages of the tournament," said Djokovic, who improved to 43-10 on the season, 22-5 on hard courts.

Djokovic won his first Grand Slam title earlier this year at the Australian Open and appeared destined to challenge Federer and Nadal atop the rankings, but his season has taken a downturn after a disappointing second-round exit at Wimbledon and a quarter-final loss to Andy Murray in Toronto last week. The 21-year-old Serb is likely excited about facing Nadal on a hard court. A win would exact a small measure of revenge for Djokovic, who twice failed to beat Nadal on clay this spring with the number two ranking hanging in the balance.

On the opposite side of the draw, Karlovic built on his win over Federer when he upended unseeded German Philipp Kohlschreiber 7-6 (8/6) 7-6 (7/3) in a quarter-final. The hard-serving Croat - who leads the ATP with 657 aces this year - came into this tournament on a three-match losing streak, but has regained the form that led him to a title at Nottingham earlier this year.

Karlovic will face the eighth-seeded Andy Murray, who overcame a slow start to post a 2-6 6-2 6-1 win over veteran Spaniard Carlos Moya, the 2002 champion.

Murray looked uninspired in losing the first set to the 31-year-old and was broken in the first game of the second. From that point, however, he won 12 of the last 15 games and looked more like the player who recently reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon and Toronto.

"I mean, to go two breaks down, a set and two breaks down, would have been tough to come back from," Murray said. "But, you know, it happens sometimes in tennis when you're feeling confident and you know your opponent hasn't maybe played as well as he can throughout the year."

Nadal captures No 1 tennis ranking

I watched the match on ESPN2 and also on the ATP website when TV went to commercials or when I wanted to see something again. TV is always ahead of the ATP streaming by a couple points it seems.

Well, Rafa WON! He is number 1! What a night in Cincinnati for Rafa. It happened on hard court and it happened in the USA. How Special is that - that where before he has not found such Rafa-success, he showed the USA and the World that he has arrived! Nicolas Lapentti gave Rafa a great match to become number 1. Rafa had to earn it. The ESPN commentators thought Rafas nerves were affecting his play. I don't know. Lapentti was fantastic! Rafa did seem to bring more magic from Set 1's tie break on. Some of his points were so Rafa-like! But Lapentti had some magical points too.

So wonderful for Rafa!

So wonderful for us as his loyal and loving fans to be a part of This Special Moment.

So happy for Rafa and Uncle Tony. So special Rafa's dear people get to share it with Rafa.

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Uploaded by Juliette2007 September 16, 2007
"A New Day"
Seems such an appropriate song for today

Rafa Reigns Supreme ~ It IS
Nadal Time!

VAMOS CAMPEON!!



Rafael Nadal ~ My Number One

RAFAEL NADAL PLAYING NICOLAS LAPENTTI AUGUST 1 in CINCINNATI

Photo credits for above 3: Getty

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Slideshow photo credits: Getty and Cincinnati Enquirer

Statistics of Rafa and Nicolas

TV schedule

The quarter final match with Rafa and Nicoloas starts at 7:00 p.m. tonight, August 1, 2008

You can also catch it online
Justin TV works on both PC and IMACs
www.justin.tv/slazenger

Works just on PCs (requires downloading their free software)
at tvunetworks.com
10006 Star Sports
tvunetworks.com/channels

Thursday Highlights, including Ivo Karlovic defeating Roger Federer as well as Rafael Nadal's match.
In case you didn't know, since Roger didn't win yesterday, Rafa is moving on up.

RAFAEL NADAL SOON TO BE NUMBER ONE

ALREADY NUMBER ONE IN HIS FANS' HEARTS

Congratulations Rafael Nadal

RAFAEL NADAL TO PLAY TOMMY HAAS IN ROUND 3 - CINCINNATI JULY 31, 2008

Rafa rolls over Serra in Cincinnati tennis beat-down

CINCINNATI, Ohio (AFP) — Rafael Nadal steamrolled to another overwhelming victory this season, crushing Florent Serra 6-0, 6-1 on Thursday in the second round of the ATP Cincinnati Masters tournament.

The lop-sided victory took just 46 minutes and was the second runaway win for the world number two in less than three months. He also lost just one game in a dominating victory over German Denis Gremelmayr in the Barcelona semi-finals.

Nadal also lost only four games when he beat number 84 Serra, of France, at the Australian Open in January.

Nadal laid down another marker for Roger Federer, whose top ranking he is closing in on and now trailing by a hair-thin 300 points.

But the Spaniard refuses to peer into the future: "I'm focussed on Cincinnati, this is a very important tournament.

"If the number one comes it will be very difficult to achieve. I have to keep playing like I have for the last four months," said the Roland Garros and Wimbledon winner.

Dmitry Tursunov sent 11th seed Richard Gasquet packing, the Frenchman collapsing in the second set to go down 7-6 (10/8), 6-0.

Novak Djokovic timidly re-entered the rankings chase behind Nadal, the third-seeded Serbian advancing over Italy's Simone Bolelli 7-6 (7/2), 7-6 (7/2).

Djokovic is being left behind as Nadal closes in on Federer. The Australian Open champion Djokovic trails Nadal by a massive 1,300 points and did not help his cause when he lost in the quarter-finals to Britain's Andy Murray during a Toronto title defence a week ago.

He came to that event with minimal confidence after going out in the Wimbledon second round to Marat Safin. But the Serb may not be quite ready to resume the fight.

"I'm just trying to focus on my game, on my career and my matches. That's my priority," he said. "I just want to improve."

The winner has advanced beyond the Cincinnati second round for the first time this week on his fourth appearance.

"I'm only 21. I don't want to put an extra pressure. I have enough pressure and expectations of being a favourite in most matches I get in.

"Thinking about number two or number one in the world would create an extra amount of pressure, which I don't need in this moment."

Eighth-seeded Scotsman Andy Murray and American seventh seed James Blake advanced with straight-set victories.

Blake continued the rescue of a modest hardcourt start, producing a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Frenchman Gilles Simon, who won the Indianapolis title earlier this month.

Murray dropped an early break but roared back over erratic American Sam Querrey for a 7-6 (7/3), 6-1 victory. The British number one looked healthy after tweaking his knee in Toronto. A scan showed him good to play this week.

Blake, who has won five of his 10 ATP titles at US events, has been trying to recover after second-round disappointments at Roland Garros and Wimbledon.

He was badly let down in Indianapolis a fortnight ago, after winning the first set but losing a semi-final to Tursunov. Blake fell 6-1, 6-2 last weekend to Nicolas Kiefer.

Spain's fifth seed David Ferrer became the highest-ranked player to fall, going down in a struggle lasting two and a half hours to Ecuador's Nicolas Lapentti 7-6 (7/2), 3-6, 6-3.

Source for the above article

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Pictures from the Rafa d Florent Round 2 match
Photo credits: Daylife, Elmundo, Getty, Yahoo Sports, Cincinnati Inquirer, The Pulse Journal

Thursday, July 31

CENTER COURT start 11:00 am
[7] J Blake (USA) vs E Gulbis (LAT)

Not Before 1:00 PM
A Seppi (ITA) vs [3] N Djokovic (SRB)
[1] R Federer (SUI) vs [16] I Karlovic (CRO)

Not Before 7:00 PM
T Haas (GER) vs F Serra (FRA) or [2] R Nadal (ESP)

[1] B Bryan (USA) / M Bryan (USA) vs [8] M Fyrstenberg (POL) / M Matkowski (POL)

GRANDSTAND start 12:15 pm
[4] N Davydenko (RUS) vs C Moya (ESP) 67(8) 01 - To Be Finished
D Tursunov (RUS) vs [8] A Murray (GBR)
[4] N Davydenko (RUS) or C Moya (ESP) vs I Andreev (RUS)
N Lapentti (ECU) vs [10] F Verdasco (ESP)

Not Before 7:00 PM
[4] M Bhupathi (IND) / M Knowles (BAH) vs [WC] M Fish (USA) / J Isner (USA) or [5] J Bjorkman (SWE) / K Ullyett (ZIM)

COURT 3 start 12:00 noon
R Soderling (SWE) vs P Kohlschreiber (GER)
[WC] M Fish (USA) / J Isner (USA) vs [5] J Bjorkman (SWE) / K Ullyett (ZIM) 76(4) 00 - To Be Finished
R Lindstedt (SWE) / J Nieminen (FIN) vs [3] J Erlich (ISR) / A Ram (ISR) 01 - To Be Finished

NUMBER ONE AT ROLAND GARROS' CLAY, WIMBLEDON'S GRASS, TORONTO ROGERS CUP'S HARD

RAFAEL NADAL - NUMBERS SCHMUMBERS

NUMBER ONE - IN THE LAST THREE TOURNAMENTS
THREE SURFACES
ROLAND GARROS - CLAY
WIMBLEDON - GRASS

TORONTO ROGERS CUP - HARD
Win number 29 in a row for Nadal
and fifth title in five events over the last 3 months
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Highlights from the final at the 2008 Rogers Masters in Toronto.
Rafael Nadal takes on Nicolas Keifer.
"UNOFFICIAL BEST PLAYER IN THE WORLD"
Watch highlights from all ATP Masters Series marquee matches at www.atpmastersseries.tv
From: ATP

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Rafa on being a number....
Nadal after third win in a row at The French Open at Roland Garros 2008
Uploaded by: xXDarling666Xx
Rafa remains perfect at Roland Garros

Nadal adds Toronto to his collection

RISING STAR RAFAEL NADAL

If you like Rafa Nadal,
most likely you'll like this...
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Rafael Nadal - Keep On Rising
Uploaded by Ingeborg08

RAFAEL NADAL PLAYS ROUND 2 IN CINCINNATI JULY 30, 2008

2008
What a year to be watching Rafael Nadal

Photo credits above: Getty

Photo credits below: Elmundo

Rafael Nadal defeated Nicolas Kiefer in the Final at Toronto
Rogers Cup
July 27, 2008
6-3, 6-2

Above (1) photo credit: Daylife

Below photo credits: Yahoo


Rafael Nadal plays Wednesday, July 30, 2008 (not before) 7:00 p.m.

Current Results as of July 29, 2008 at Cincinnati

Order of Play for Wednesday July 30, 2008 (also below)

TV schedule

Rafael Nadal plays (not before) 7:00 p.m. July 30, 2008

Want to watch the matches Wednesday and the rest of the week (free)
and don't have The Tennis Channel, like me?

1) TVUNetworks. This doesn't work on MACs.
The links
http://pages.tvunetworks.com/channels/# http://pages.tvunetworks.com/channels/index.jsp?g=3

You can set the time to your area when reading their guide
which is for one week forward.

This requires you to install their software.

on the Sports channel use:
10006 Star Sports

2) Works on MACs and PCs: http://www.justin.tv/slazenger

Wednesday, July 30

CENTER COURT start 11:00 am
[7] J Blake (USA) vs G Simon (FRA)
S Querrey (USA) vs [8] A Murray (GBR)
S Bolelli (ITA) vs [3] N Djokovic (SRB)
Not Before 7:00 PM F Serra (FRA) vs [2] R Nadal (ESP)
R Lindstedt (SWE) / J Nieminen (FIN) vs [3] J Erlich (ISR) / A Ram (ISR)

GRANDSTAND start 11:00 am
[5] D Ferrer (ESP) vs N Lapentti (ECU)
T Haas (GER) vs G Monfils (FRA)
[WC] J Isner (USA) vs I Andreev (RUS) or [15] R Stepanek (CZE)
[11] R Gasquet (FRA) vs D Tursunov (RUS)
Not Before 7:00 PM
[4] N Davydenko (RUS) vs C Moya (ESP)

COURT 3 start 11:00 am
E Gulbis (LAT) vs [LL] A Clement (FRA)
T Berdych (CZE) vs A Seppi (ITA)
[Q] C Guccione (AUS) vs [10] F Verdasco (ESP)
[1] B Bryan (USA) / M Bryan (USA) vs T Widom (USA) / M Yani (USA)
S Bolelli (ITA) / A Seppi (ITA) vs [2] D Nestor (CAN) / N Zimonjic (SRB)
T Chen (TPE) / P King (USA) or [WC] M Fish (USA) / J Isner (USA) vs [5] J Bjorkman (SWE) / K Ullyett (ZIM)

COURT 4 start 12:00 noon
[6] L Dlouhy (CZE) / L Paes (IND) vs I Karlovic (CRO) / R Wassen (NED)
P Hanley (AUS) / J Kerr (AUS) or T Robredo (ESP) / A Sa (BRA) vs [8] M Fyrstenberg (POL) / M Matkowski (POL)
[4] M Bhupathi (IND) / M Knowles (BAH) vs T Berdych (CZE) / R Stepanek (CZE) - To Be Arranged

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Uploaded by ElSobacodeNadal
Nadal deafeats Kiefer in Toronto on hard July 27, 2008
directly after winning on clay at Roland Garros
and on grass at Wimbledon

VAMOS RAFA