The Madrid Open was a long time coming. Almost from the week I arrived in Madrid earlier this year, it was in the diary - tickets for the finals were around half the price of Wimbledon, and (gasp) actually available to book online, no ballots and no lotteries.
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| I'm with Rafa, baby |
We kept an eye on the draw and match timings and snapped up last minute tickets after work on Thursday night to watch Andy Murray and Gilles Simon fight it out to move up to the quarter finals.
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Madrid Open matches are only three sets long, even for the men, so when Murray lost the first set it looked like all was lost. But he fought back and the agonising third set went to a tie-break, keeping us on the edge of our seats until nearly 1am.
But the real Big Day Out was Sunday, the day of the finals. The Madrid finals are nearly all played on the same day, with the men's doubles, women's singles and men's singles all on centre court, one after the other.
We arrived just in time for the final few sets of the men's doubles, when the American Bryan brothers dominated and took home their 87th career trophy (just greedy really).
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| They even wear matching outfits... creepy. |
We were really there for the singles. Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova are both such impressive figures on the court, completely dominating presences.
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Serena Williams, rather unsurprisingly, came out on top in straight sets, and gave a sweet thank you speech in her best broken Spanish. Although it was her 50th career title, she showed absolutely no signs of not wanting it as much as any other, leaping around the court with joy when she won her final point.
The tennis stadium in Madrid, la Caja Mágica (the Magic Box), is a gorgeous venue, but inexplicably made entirely of metal. As the temperatures rose and the afternoon went on, sitting in centre court felt like being in an oven.
But we stuck it out for the match everyone had been waiting for. Having been a third empty for the whole tournament, the men's singles match was the only time the stadium was completely full.
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| Rafa Rafa Rafa! |
I felt rather sorry for Stanislas Wawrinka - playing Rafa Nadal, Spain's sweetheart and the king of clay, on his home turf, was a pretty big ask. There was no doubt whose side the crowd was on.
When Nadal won in straight sets in just an hour and ten minutes, everyone in the crowd were on their feet cheering and screaming.
As silence fell during the prize-giving, as everyone waited for the speeches, a woman shouted from the back of the stadium "Rafa, you're the pride of Spain!" And the crowd erupted again.
