Monte Carlo Wrap-up, Barcelona Preview

Well, it looks like rumors of Rafael Nadal's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Despite the fact that he hadn't won a title since his monumental loss at the French Open last year, despite his months out of the game with knee problems, despite his surprising losses in recent months after blowing leads, Nadal came back and showed everyone why he's the king of clay. Verdasco was dismissed just as easily as Thiemo De Bakker or Michael Berrer, and that's saying something. Despite not facing his two biggest clay court opponents, Djokovic or Federer, Nadal made such light work of the resistance he did face (Verdasco, Ferrer, and Ferrero are all solid clay court players, anyway) that I don't think anyone could have stopped him this week. Bjorn Borg could have traveled through time to 2010 from 1980, and he still would have barely been able to win a set.

This was a really bad day for finals, as a matter of fact. In addition to Nadal's trouncing of Verdasco 6-0, 6-1, Francesca Schiavone beat Roberta Vinci in the Barcelona women's final 6-1, 6-1, and Sam Stosur beat Vera Zvonareva 6-0, 6-3. In three matches, the losing players combined to win a grand total of 6 games. That's a single set, that they managed to win, all playing together. At least Verdasco had the excuse of playing an in-form Nadal on his best surface.

Looking ahead to Barcelona, Nadal is in action once again, trying to defend a second consecutive title for the sixth consecutive time. That would be... even more unprecedented than his win today was, I suppose. Let's take a look at the draw. Since this is 500-level tournament rather than a Masters 1000, the field is a bit depleted, but most of the clay-court specialists are still around.

Nadal is the top seed and 5-time defending champion here this week. Who knows if the conditions will suit him as well as they did in Monte Carlo, but he's going to have seriously drop his level of play to be challenged. Which is not to say that there aren't strong players in his quarter. In the third round, I expect he'll face the winner of the most intriguing first-round matchup, between Finn Jarkko Nieminen and Brazilian Tomaz Bellucci. I would like to see Bellucci-Nadal on clay, because I expect we'll see that matchup another dozen times in the next five or six years. Eventually, Bellucci may get the better of the master, but at this point, he's just not developed enough as a player and Nadal is far too strong for him. Nadal's quarterfinal opponent will probably be David Ferrer again, and I expect that the result will be much the same as it was in Monte Carlo. He may also face Tommy Robredo there, but Tommy has even less of a shot.

Nadal's semifinal opponent will probably be either fourth seed Fernando Verdasco or fifth seed Fernando Gonzalez. Both have good results on clay, and are slated to meet in the quarters. There are a handful of spoilers in that section to watch out for, though. David Nalbandian is there, as is Ernests Gulbis. Igor Andreev plays Richard Gasquet in another enticing opening round matchup, and the lone American in the draw is Michael Russel, who apparently missed the memo that every US player is just going to consider the clay season a lost cause. I hope he wins a match.

The other half of the draw features a projected quarterfinal match-up between JW Tsonga and Juan Carlos Ferrero, which one of the best matches at Monte Carlo, so that would be an exciting rematch. Both will have to get through tricky match-ups in the round of 16 to have a replay of last week's three-setter, though. Ferrero faces Juan Monaco and Tsonga is up against Nicolas Almagro. Really, any of those four has a legitimate shot of making the semifinals.

Their opponent could be just about anyone, as the two top seeds who are weakest on clay ended up in this quarter. Berdych is slated to face Soderling for a spot in the semis, but despite the Swede's amazing run to last year's French Open final, he's really not a specialist on the red clay. Look for a dark horse, maybe Horacio Zeballos or Lleyton Hewitt, to make a run to the semis from this quarter.

The question of the week is really going to be whether Nadal is going to have any more trouble demolishing his opposition than he did last week. It seems like he simply can't continue to play the kind of imperious tennis he managed last week, but he's done it here five times before. Why not a sixth time for the second week in a row?