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Hero again!

Anyone who can beat Federer is a hero of sorts. He has lost only 7 matches this year. It was such a change to see him the one scrambling, looking worried, committing forced and unforced errors, etc.

Congratulations to Nalbandian on doing a Djokovic, i.e., beating the world numbers 1, 2 and 3 in the same tournament. The poor guy has been on the downward curve for such a long time. About 2 years, if I'm not wrong. And I must admit that I had practically written him off. I can just imagine Roddick and Hewitt now scratching their heads and wondering how these 2 guys managed to beat Federer.

Well, hopefully this livens up the party somewhat. Federer, Nadal, Federer, Nadal... that was getting really boring.

Anyway, over all these years, I've had the impression that Nalbandian was on the bulky, hulking side. It was only last week that I realised he is actually one of the smaller players. He looked half of Federer's size, which makes him maybe one-third Nadal's size, and he is quite a bit shorter than Federer, Nadal and Djokovic. What a revelation, ha ha!

The party-like atmosphere at the prize presentation was an interesting change from the usual staid ones. It was cute having Nalbandian spray champagne on the model-ball girls (off-duty models doubling up as ball girls) and officials.
However, there was this Spanish-speaking dude at the prize-giving who suddenly broke into English, heaping praise upon praise praise on Federer, while reserving, as far as I could make out, just one or two congratulatory sentences in Spanish for Nalbandian. Now, what was up with that??
Pics from here

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