OK, so he didn’t win the singles.  Ivan Ljubicic took care of Nadal in the semifinals.  But with Marc Lopez and Rafael Nadal entered as wildcards, they proceeded their way through the draw and made the finals where they faced top seed, Zimonjic and Nestor.  Nadal rarely plays doubles, but he has won some titles before.  In particular, the two beat Zimonjic-Nestor in Doha last year.

The two stayed on serve in the first set, and won the tiebreak.  In the second set, they got an early break, and held that to win the match, 7-6, 6-4.

The pair played mostly from the baseline, but sprinkled in the I formation, the Aussie formation, and both ripped hard groundies to pass their opponents.

There was more interest than usual in this match due to Nadal playing.  The crowd were probably rooting for Nadal because they like to see singles players play doubles and that elevated interest overall.

Makes you wonder what would happen if singles players played doubles more often.  You’d probably see different styles of play, with baseline teams trying to pass net teams, which you normally never see because most doubles teams do play more conventional serve and volley, at least on the men’s side.

So congrats to Rafa for winning a doubles title.  He seemed really excited winning the title as did Marc Lopez who has struggled to win doubles otherwise.