One closer to 100 straight!

I think we'll be seeing a lot of Nadal pics here at TennisCast for the coming months. Hey everyone, M here. Nadal has added one more win to his now more than impressive straight clay court wins streak resting at 72. In todays Open SEAT Godo tournament in Barcelona Nadal defended his title for a second time by beating Guillermo Canas in a convincing 6-3, 6-4 display. The match lasted and hour and forty minutes and it was all Nadal from the start. The new clay court king posted the only break in the first set and the only break in the second. In the first set Nadal dominated with his 71% first serve percentage. He faced two break points but defended them nicely. He won 80% of his first serves compared to Canas' 61%. In the second set Nadal upped his serve performance and rose his first serve percentage to 80% and won 85% of those first serve. He did not face a single break point in the second. This is Nadal's third straight Barcelona final.

Nadal will not be in action this week as he will take a much needed rest before the second master series of the clay court swing. This week there two smaller tournaments in Estoril, Portugal and Munich, Germany. The highest seeds in each of those tournaments are Davydenko and Haas respectively. Nadal will be back in action along with 54 other ATP pro's on the 7th of May when action gets started in Rome. ATP Master Series TV will have all the action so make sure to check it out.

With this win we'll see one major change in the ATP 2007 race as Nadal will top Federer. Before this tournament began Nadal was a close second at 305 compared to Federer's 345 points, but that all changed when Nadal reached the finals at Barcelona where he could, if he won, recieve 50 points and thus have the chance to pass Federer. With his win he adds those 50 points and moves ever so closely over Federer in the Race at 355 to Federer's 345. It's a tight race for sure this year. Nadal will also receive 300 points for his overall ranking and move to over 5000 points, still a distant second to Federer's 7200. We'll be back next week with results from Estoril and Munich and with our pre-tournament analysis of Rome. See you guys soon. M out.

Oh, remember, Mario gets here this week so we'll be posting our second podcast pretty soon and weekly episodes will follow after that so check back soon.