Remember When February Was Supposed To Be Dull?

I was really looking forward to my month off from blogging as tennis is usually quite dull, still suffering from the post-Aussie Open hangover. Foiled again by Nadal!

That's right Nadal made his return last week from a seven-month hiatus at Viña del Mar, an ATP 250 tourney, on his beloved clay surface in both singles and doubles with Juan Monaco, and things were going quite smoothly until he ran into the stalwart grinder we all recognize as Horacio Zeballos. And while I will neither confirm nor deny that I knew of Zeballos' existence on tour until a few days ago, I'm quite shocked he managed to spoil the King of Clay's welcome back party.

Nadal looked quite good in his matches leading up to the final (although he did say he was still experiencing minor knee pains during the event) and I really couldn't tell you what happened to him against Zeballos, but I yelled in surprise when I saw this picture on Twitter:

Don't get used to this image.

Nadal and Pico ended up losing in the doubles finals as well. All in all, I'm sure Rafa is both encouraged and disappointed by this week, but it seems like mostly good news. We'll see whether he gears himself up for the spring U.S. hard court Masters or save himself for the Euro-clay season. Best of luck, Rafa! We've all missed you...well, all except Andy Murray.

Any thoughts on Nadal's season to come? Will he keep up with his Big 4 brethren? Doha is up for the ladies with the #1 ranking up for grabs yet again! Sure to be another exciting week. In February, of all months. Who knew?

(edit: almost forgot, Rafa's Welcome Back Tour rolls on this week at São Paulo where he'll once again be in the singles and doubles draw (with David Nalbandian)! Be sure to keep tabs!)

Jetlagged

I can confidently say that my body clock has reset to Eastern Standard Time (six days later).

What an Australian Open! ...Okay, it was actually a little anticlimactic. Dare I say Oz was disappointing? Here are a couple of things that made the Happy Slam such a downer:

All flower, no power (or accuracy).

The matchups we were all waiting to see were lackluster or didn't even happen. We all marked Maria Sharapova's third-round clash with Venus Williams on our calendar and were hopeful for an intense, albeit noisy, match since Venus looked almost as good as MaSha through her first two opponents...DUD. MaSha crushed Venus, yet celebrated like she won a thrilling three-set final. I was left with my mouth hanging open in shock because it was such a one-way street.

That wasn't the only one. Serena and MaSha were on a collision course to meet in the finals, but back spasms and Li Na put the respective breaks on their near flawless Oz Open runs. Even Nole vs. Andy was a little hard to watch. The one match that actually lived up to it's billing was Andy vs. Rog in the second men's semis. Most of the others were not up to par.

Another bummer was the crazy number of injuries. Serena rolled her ankle before her first set was over and was laboring throughout her shortened second week, Sloane Stephens had three or four straight opponents take medical timeouts, Andy Murray seemed to slow down a step in the third set of the finals because of those unsightly blisters, and the whole Vika shenanigan made injuries the talk of the tournament. Depressing.

Leave a comment if you think there were even lamer things about this year's Australian Open or if you feel like it wasn't that bad of a Grand Slam at all! Here's to hoping the season goes up from here. Congratulations to Novak Djokovic and Victoria Azarenka for defending their titles! Davis Cup is already upon us. Good luck to Jim Courier and the USA squad!