At the start of 2013, Rafael Nadal trained with his compatriot Tommy Robredo for a few days. Both the players were coming back from long injury setbacks and both were looking to regain their old form.

The weeks have passed. Both the players have featured in a lot of matches since then. Nadal managed to set the world on fire as he hit top form straightaway after his comeback, but, one cannot say the same thing for Robredo. He seemed to be struggling big time in the first few tournaments that he played after the comeback, but, the Spaniard has slowly started to get into his groove now. He got better of the Swiss maestro Roger Federer in the 4^th round of the US Open the other day and made it to the final 8 where he will be facing none other than Nadal.

Talking to the reporters ahead of that match, Nadal said, “I had trained with him for a few days back home in Barcelona. We both were making comebacks and I saw hunger in the eyes of Tommy. He was quite serious and passionate.”

“He didn’t start the season as well as he would have liked, but, I was pretty sure that he would start winning at some point of time in the season and he is doing that now. He is a fine player and he has worked very hard in the last few months.”

“If you are prepared to put in the hard work and battle your way through the tough periods, you are going to taste success at some point of time. Tommy has done that and he is having a great time now.”

Nadal has so far played 6 matches against Robredo and has won all of them.

Rafael Nadal has won the Barcelona Open tennis tournament by defeating his compatriot Nicolas Almagro in the final match. Nadal won the match in the straight sets by 6-4, 6-3.

Nadal who was given the second seed in this event took just 92 minutes to finish off the match.

This was the 10^th match between these two players and Nadal has defeated Almagro in all the 10 matches.

In the post match interview, Nadal said, “I am glad to become the champion of this tournament again. Every tournament that I have won after my come back means a lot to me and this one is no different.”

“The conditions were not easy at all especially, in the initial parts of the first set. Big rain drops were coming down and I was having a lot of problems. But, slowly, I settled down.”

“When you have a straight set victory over a guy like Nicolas in the title round, it gives you a lot of contentment. I was really expecting it to be a close match. But, thankfully, Nicolas didn’t get it right today.”

Nadal didn’t have a great start in the opening set. His serve was broken twice successively in the first 3 games and he was down by 0-3. However, he bounced back in style from there and with breakthroughs in the 4^th and the 6^th game; he won the next four games in a row to take the lead of 4-3.

The next couple of games went with the serve and at the end of the 9^th game; the score was 5-4 in Nadal’s favour.

The Spaniard got his third breakthrough in the set in the 10^th game and sealed the set with that.

In the second set, Nadal got a breakthrough in the 4^th game to take a lead of 3-1. After that, he held his serve in the 5^th, 7^th and 9^th game and won the match.