Rome Results

Men's Tournament

Result

World number 1 Rafael Nadal won a record fourth Internazionali BNL d’Italia title with a hard-fought 7-6(2), 6-2 victory over defending champion and world number 3 Novak Djokovic at the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 clay-court tennis tournament in Rome.

Analysis

Rafael Nadal - Nadal has already won 5 titles this year, including his first hard court Grand Slam title at the Australian Open, ATP World Tour Masters 1000 Indian Wells and ATP World Tour Masters 1000 Monte Carlo. His win can be attributed to his ability to raise his level of play in the first set tie break in the finals and the continual pressure he placed on Djokovic especially in the second set.

Novak Djokovic - His come-back-from-behind win over Roger Federer in the SF, when he was down early breaks in the second and third set, showed the improvement in his mental ability. He is gaining confidence with each and every match.

Roger Federer - An improvement in this tournament, beating Stepanek along the way (whom he lost to in the same tournament last year). However, his loss to Djokovic was without excuse, as he was up a break in the final two sets before succumbing to the Serb. Hard to see him regain his prior dominance given his current lack of confidence.

Andy Murray - A rare early exit in this tournament.


Women's tournament

Result

Newly crowned world number 1 Dinara Safina won her first title of the year at the Internazionali BNL d'Italia against her country-women, the rejunenated, Svetlana Kuznetsova, 6-3 6-2.

Analysis

Dinara Safina - Her ascent to number 1 had attracted recent controversy, as she has not won a Grand Slam in the past 12 months, and have cumulated enough ranking points to be number 1 through the number of smaller tournaments she has played. But attached to the number 1 ranking is confidence, and this was on display during this tournament, especially in her epic 3 hour win over Venus Williams in the SF, a player she had never won a set off of, 67(3) 63 64.

Serena Williams - The loss of her number 1 ranking seems to have taken some edge off her, and she again made an early round exit, despite telling the media that she deserved the number 1 ranking based on her 2 Grand Slam wins and 1 Grand Slam final result in the past 12 months. It will be interesting to see how Serena will perform in the next Grand Slam.