By TW Contributing Writer MarieJ, and TW Contributing Editor Rosangel Valenti
Rosangel : As many Tribe members who were reading the Crisis Centers during the Monte Carlo Masters will know, the two of us had a pair of tickets for the day of the Monte Carlo finals. Bought weeks in advance (on the "off-chance" that Rafael Nadal might, just conceivably, turn up in the singles final), the tickets also gave us the unexpected bonus of a doubles final also featuring Rafa, along with Tommy Robredo.
MarieJ: First of all, I want to thank Rosangel for sharing with me those tickets... they were pure gold!
Prologue (to what MarieJ has dubbed a vaguely Shakespearian Federesque Tragedy)
MarieJ : On Saturday night, I was so excited about going down to Monte Carlo from Paris to watch Rafa that I was a bit afraid that I wouldn't be able to sleep at all. I woke up feeling great, though; I believed things were going to be perfect, and nothing could go wrong for the rest of the day! Vamos!
Rosangel : I always have difficulty sleeping before a trip. I'm nervous about not waking up on time, and I'm afraid of flying, even though I've done a lot of it lately on the Rafa Euro-Spectator Slam. When I woke up, it was a gray day in England, with rain spitting down. My photo gear was already packed, so all I needed to do was put my foot down hard on the pedal to get to Heathrow.
Act I
MarieJ : The train trip was quite long (5 hours and 30 minutes), but by the time you pass Avignon, you can feel the southern atmosphere. The landscape colors change, and you enter a panorama of red tiled roofs. Clay is the dominant color in the south of France: those red tiles, the red clay-like earth, and red cliffs overlooking the deep blue of the Mediterranean. The French Riviera is just so so beautiful. The train follows the coast from Marseille to Nice, and everywhere you wish that you could stop over, or at least open the window as you could in the old trains, to smell the air! The train arrived in Nice on time, so I could catch the connection to get to the Monte Carlo Country Club in the nick of time! I was climbing the staircase just at the time Rafa was announced on court... Rosia was there waiting for me, perfecto, no ?
Rosangel : The first thing I was told when I arrived at Heathrow was that check-in was already closed. This timing didn't accord with the information I'd had beforehand, but it didn't look good. The next flight to Nice would arrive at 14.40pm, twenty minutes before the singles final was due to start. I simply begged the airline staff to take pity on me, having only one bag, and promised to run all the way to the gate. Several phone calls later I was given the go-ahead. If I looked slightly disheveled by the time MarieJ saw me, that run, toting two heavy cameras and two large white lenses along endless corridors and down neck-breaking stairs, is probably the reason.
I got to the gate early, of course. The flight arrived in Nice right on time. Outside, the sun beat down mercilessly. One tense taxi ride later (there were traffic jams on the way to Monaco, and all the way through it, which gave me plenty of time to check out the sight of Monaco Beach) and I was in my seat with 20 minutes to spare, just in time for the presentation of the finalists. I can probably be forgiven for thinking that Abba's Gimme!Gimme! Gimme! A Man After Midnight was a strange theme tune for the ceremony. The ball kids formed a kind of "phalanx of honour", and the finalists came out preceded by their national flags. MarieJ arrived just as this was happening, which was a relief, as we'd been exchanging progress reports by text, and the last I'd heard she was still on the train.
ActII
MarieJ : At the beginning of the match I was as nervous as Rafa - I just could not eat my sandwich until the score reached 4-4! The match was a bit of a rollercoaster with so many breaks up or down...when he came back from 0-4 down in the second set, I felt bad for the Fed fans. There were many of them seated on our side, not to mention how they were going to frazzle in TW.
In Monte Carlo you could feel their disappointment too... but, for me it was terrifico; I just love the way Rafa fights back every single time to win a match. I admire him so much for that. I'm not going to comment too much about the match since everything must have been said here already, but Rafa needed this title badly, to keep his ranking, his aura on clay, and his dream about winning his favorite tournament (I guess he meant favorite besides the Slams, because I suspect Roland Garros and Wimby do really matter to him ;-)
But in some ways Rafa and Monte Carlo is a kind of love story; it all started here in 2005, and three years later he's still so much in love with the red clay. I really don't know how many times he's going to win Monte Carlo, but I think the next guy to surpass his mark is not yet born!
Rosangel : Like MarieJ, I had my own lunch with me - I had to smile that for our day trip to the playground that is Monte Carlo, we both took our own sandwiches! We were seated right up at the top of the stadium. Earlier in the week I hadn't been able to see the Mediterranean, as I was seated further forward, but from our lofty perch, not only could we look down into the hot pit of the court, but we could see plenty of sky and water, and some luxurious-looking yachts, bobbing on the horizon.
I was nervous until the match started. However, I had my camera to occupy me for at least some of the time, while keeping an eye on the action. I took a number of pictures of the final, although unfortunately the sheer distance involved and the angle of view means that this was the most challenging tennis match I've ever photographed. Monte Carlo economises a bit on the height between the rows of seats - I presume, to pack as many people as possible into the towering stands - so often, a clear shot was blocked. Thus, these pictures are not of the usual quality - just the best I could do. How I got the picture above, I'll never know.
During the second set, after Rafa went down 0-4 (the flag-waving Swiss fans were in ecstasy!), we had a discussion about whether Rafa could come back and win the set. It's fair to say that although neither of us predicted it, we didn't rule it out, because it appeared to us that his level had dropped at the start of the second set, and he was offering up too many short balls and errors, while Federer had raised his level and was taking full advantage.
We all know the story from there. The Nadal forehand to the Federer backhand, the cutting out of errors, the victor's fall into the red dirt. I was present when Rafa won his last trophy, in Stuttgart back in July 2007, and also attended the final of the Paris Masters with MarieJ when he lost to David Nalbandian. So it was a very long wait for his fans as well as Rafa himself. But he was back in the winner's circle again, holding up the Coupe des Princes. On the way to the title, marieJ did a fabulous job of cheering Rafa on, in spite of the numbers of Swiss fans surrounding us - maybe some of you heard her on TV? She was the one yelling 'Vamos chiqui!'
