April 30, 2009

Rafa Nadal eased into the third round of the Rome Masters Series tournament yesterday as he ended the hopes of his friend and home favourite, Andreas Seppi.

The Italian put in a decent display and was competitive for long spells, but still could not seriously trouble Rafa as he scored a 6-2, 6-3 victory in an hour and 19 minutes of play.

“To be honest, I feel kind of bad about beating Seppi today because he’s such a nice guy," said Rafa at a press conference after the match.

Then he continued, "I'm coming here with big motivation, because Rome is a very big tournament.  It's impossible to win every year.  That's normal [to] lose last year. I'm going to try my best to have a good result here. I start[ed] well today, so that's very good news”.  

In today’s third round match, Rafa will play Swedish Robin SODERLING, who beat Victor CRIVOI in three sets: 6-1, 6-7(2), 6-1 in the second round of the Italian event.

“I will try my best tomorrow to have good match against Soderling," said the World No.1, who leads Robin 2-0 in the head-to-head department.

Rafa crushed Soderling in the opening round of the 2006 French Open before a far more memorable and controversial encounter one year later in the Wimbledon third round which ended in five sets, 6-4 6-4 6-7(7) 4-6 7-5.

TODAY’S ORDER OF PLAY

STADIO PIETRANGELI

Starting At: 1:00 PM

Fernando GONZALEZ (CHI) vs Jurgen MELZER (AUT)

Tommy ROBREDO (ESP) vs Novak DJOKOVIC (SRB)

Radek STEPANEK (CZE) vs Roger FEDERER (SUI)

Starting at 8:30 PM

Rafael NADAL (ESP) vs Robin SODERLING (SWE) 

Vamos Rafa!