Business As Usual for Nadal in Barcelona

After winning his fifth straight Monte Carlo Masters title last weekend, world number one Rafael Nadal immediately flew back to his home country for this week’s Barcelona Open Banco Sabadell, an ATP World Tour 500 event which he won for the past four years.

The Spaniard has so far compiled a 21-1 win-loss streak in this event, his lone defeat came from the hands of Alex Corretja in the second round of his debut in 2003. Since then, he’s beaten Juan Carlos Ferrero (2005), Tommy Robredo (2006), Guillermo Canas (2007), and David Ferrer (2008) to clinch the title four consecutive times.

Here’s the list of seeded players in this week’s tournament. Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray are not participating in this event.

[1] Rafael Nadal
[2] Fernando Verdasco
[3] Nikolay Davydenko
[4] David Ferrer
[5] Fernando Gonzalez
[6] Tommy Robredo
[7] David Nalbandian
[8] Stanislas Wawrinka

Russian player Marat Safin, the winner of this event in 2000, was granted a wild card entry and will be playing in the tournament for the last time. The former world number one already announced that this season would be his last. He’s set to retire later this year.

The winner of this event will receive €286,000, plus 500 ranking points.

For live coverage, updates and player interviews in this week’s Barcelona Open, check out the TennisTV website by the ATP & WTA tour.