The year started well with a trophy bite at the Capitala World Tennis Championship exhibition tournament where Rafa had a very welcome win over Robin Soderling.


This was closely followed by the runners up trophy at the Exxon Mobil Qatar Open.


In the middle of the month we had the Hit for Haiti fund raiser, which gave us these special moments.


There was plenty to delight us in the first week of the Australian Open including our all-time favourite on court interview with Jim Courier. The second week was not so good and the month ended badly with Rafa's retirement from his quarter final match against Andy Murray.



Rafa's injury left him side-lined for the whole month which took his ranking down to number 4 in the world - the lowest he had been for nearly 5 years. With no Rafa tennis to watch some of us, at least, were delighted when he was featured in Shakira's music video for the "Gypsy" single.



Rafa made it back to the courts at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells sporting an alarming pair of shorts that he admitted "looked better in the pictures than the real".


He was beaten by Ivan Ljubicic in the final of the singles but at least came away a few hours later with the doubles title with his partner, Marc Lopez.


The month ended with his quarter final win over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami. He lost in the semi finals.



This is the month when it all began to change. Back on clay at last, Rafa became the first man to win 6 consecutive tournaments when he took the title again in Monte Carlo for the loss of only 14 games in the whole week. This broke his eleven month title drought and was the springboard for what was to follow.


He very sensibly skipped the tournament in Barcelona and two weeks later he was biting the trophy again at the Internazionali BNL d'Italia in Rome.



The titles continued at the Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open when Rafa became the first man to win all three clay court masters and the first to win three masters (on any surface) back to back. It also gave him a record-breaking 18th ATP Masters Series title.


After a rain-interrupted first week at Roland Garros, the last day of the month gave him his 200th win on clay in the fourth round.



It was great to see Rafa celebrating his birthday in Paris again.


But, of course, the best of all was to see him regain his Roland Garros title (his 5th French Open win) and become the first man ever to claim the "Clay Slam". The win also enabled him to take back the number 1 world ranking.


No time to pause for breath and savour the win, though, as he was straight off to the grass courts of Aegon Championships at Queen's Club. He played doubles with Marc Lopez but pulled out of their second round match after his loss in the singles to Feliciano Lopez. He made the most of the opportunity to practise on a grass court, though, and to check just how chilly it was in the UK without a shirt.


His return to Wimbledon after being MIA last year was greeted with rapturous applause but the first week proved to be pretty tough with two nail-biting five-setters.



We move into July for the second week of Wimbledon. It was wonderful to see him take another title and celebrate the win in such an original fashion.


Just because I love it so much, I'm including my favourite picture of Rafa with the trophy.


A few days later he jetted off to South Africa with his dream ticket to see Spain win the football World Cup. It was brilliant to see him looking so excited and dressed as a true fan.


After that we were forced to survive for the rest of the month on pictures of Rafa on holiday


and a very nice photo shoot in Mallorca.



This month took Rafa back across the pond for the second hard court season of the year. First up was the Rogers Cup in Toronto where he lost to Andy Murray in the semi finals. This tournament was memorable for Rafa's first pairing with Novak Djokovic in the doubles. Unfortunately they lost in the first round and very few of us saw them play since tv coverage was pretty much non-existent.


Then it was straight on to Cincinnati for the snappily titled Western & Southern Financial Group Masters where an inspired Marcos Baghdatis beat Rafa in the quarter finals.


Whilst there he took part in an activity called "art-balling" which involves hitting paint covered tennis balls at a large canvas to create a self portrait. The final picture sold for $26,500 - just slightly outside the budget of most of the Vamos Brigade.


At the end of the month he was in New York participating in Nike's Prime Time Knockout Event and then at the Arthur Ashe Kids Day.



The first week of the US Open revealed Rafa's new serve and a determination to do well.


Of course, in the second week he exceeded our wildest hopes in the rain-delayed final and collapsed to the ground as the US Open champion.


This made him the first player since Rod Laver to win three slams back to back and the youngest player in the open era to complete the Golden Slam.


In October Rafa finally made it to Thailand to compete in the PTT Thailand Open in Bangkok. Although beaten in the semi final by Garcia-Lopez he was a huge hit with the fans who had waited so long to see him.


Then it was straight on to Tokyo for the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships where he picked up his seventh title of the year.


In his third straight week of competing it was not that great a surprise when he lost his second match at the Shanghai Rolex Masters.


While he was in Asia he took the opportunity to go with his mum to inaugurate a sports school in Anantapur in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh which is being supported by his charitable foundation.


He came back home to play some golf in the Pro-Am golf tournament prior to the Castelló Masters Costa Azahar.



On November 4th Rafa received the Alma Award, which is the given out by the Real Madrid foundation, in acknowledgement of his extensive charity work.


Shortly afterwards he went to France for the Paris-Bercy Masters but withdrew before playing, citing "a small case of tendinitis" in his left shoulder picked up while practising.


At the World Tour Finals later in the month he exceeded his previous results there by winning all his round robin matches and reaching the final for the first time.


While he was there he was given the trophies for being the year-end number one and for the long-awaited Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award.



On December 2nd an emotional Rafa attended Carlos Moya's tribute at the Trui Teatre in Palma de Mallorca following Carlos's retirement from the ATP tour.


Since then it's been quiet but we know that he will be playing two charity exhibition matches against Roger Federer - the first in Zurich on Tuesday December 21st and the second on the following day in Madrid.

What a fabulous year!