Tuesday 23 November 2010

An evening to remember



Anyone who knows me, even a little bit, will know my admiration for Rafael Nadal. I have followed his matches since he was part of the Cup davis final in 2004. Well, truth is I have never seen him in person in real life.
But yesterday, Omar got tickets to go and see him play at the ATP World Tour Finals at the O2. When I got there Omar greeted me with a "I am sorry, there has been a mistake and we don't have tickets!" To say that I was upset is an understatement, so I decided to walk towards the Fan area thinking there must be pictures and stuff like that. What I did not expect was the practice courts to be in plain sight for anyone to see. When I saw a multitude on one of the courts, I asked who was practicing and they said Rafa. I thought to myself, well If Rafa is about 10 metres from me there is simply no way that I am not going to see him from the first line. So, since I am very short I navigated to front row. There were about 5 meters between Rafa and myself. 



I understood there and then how people feel about certain singers or bands, when they faint just at the sight of them. Rafa oozes charisma in an earthy kind of way. His uncle Toni (his coach) was there as was the rest of the team as well as Spain Davis Cup team captain Albert Costa.
At that point, I could not have care less about getting the tickets to see the match. I Had seen my beloved Rafa quite close and hitting some balls, what else could top that? But Omar and his friends manage to get some at the last minute and, after a lovely dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, we got to watch the match between Rafa and Roddick from almost the rooftop. The match is played on a indoor hard court which is famously the most difficult type for Rafa, last year he didn't manage to even win a set in three matches, so my expectations were low.




The first set didn't go too well for Rafa, neither did the first few games of the second. But soon enough Rafa picked up and went on to win the second and third set and of course the match. 




I shout quite a lot of Vamos Rafa! among other things, clapped a lot and got off my feet in several occassions.



It was, by all accounts, a fantastic evening.


Vamos Rafa!

2 comments:

Lindsay Mason said...

You know that I am green with envy of course! Lucky you and I know how excited you must have been. Well, you deserved a special treat and Rafa is certainly that! Love, Lindsay x x

Dawn said...

OMG!! Rafa is just the best, how lucky were you to see him in the flesh, sounds like the perfect evening.

Vamos Rafa!!

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