Rafa struts (with a stammer) against Youzhny ...

Oh Rafa ... hey honey, you strutted your stuff today.

That was a really great match from Rafa. I have to say that's the best I've seen him play in a while, and he played some wonderful stuff in the first set and with a break against Mickey in the 5th game, it was enough to win him the set. Now Mickey was playing some fine tennis himself, so that made Rafa's first set all the better.

In the second set, he raced ahead to a 4-1 lead - again playing some wonderful stuff - so when he stood to serve, it was with every confidence that I expected him to be 5-1 and almost match over.

But yikes ... it was 15-15 and then Mickey played a delightful drop shot. Some passive play by Rafa ended with him hitting long. So break points, and then a glorious backhand down-the-line gave Mickey the game. But it just shows you how fragile the game of tennis can be because for all the great play and confidence that a set and a half should have given Rafa, that loss of serve made him take a step backwards and go into his shell a little bit, and Mickey won his service game through quite a bit of passive play from Rafa.

But he stepped it up and came out to win his service game to take it to 5-3. Mickey played well to take his own, so it meant Rafa was serving for the match at 5-4. Again we saw some of the nervousness creep back into Rafa's game, and more passive play meant he was facing break points at 15-40. But he shook himself down, played aggressive and it was 30-40. A great wide lefty serve was courageously followed up by a lovely volley and so it was deuce. Micky got himself another break point by another glorious backhand, but Rafa hung on in there and was pumped and delighted with his win.

Rafa keeps telling us that he's still working on his game and that we won't see the best of him for a while yet. Its the true. You can't but help get excited when you see the swagger back and some wonderful winners and lovely play, but scratch the surfrace and Rafa can still be a bag of nerves ... so we've still got it all to see when he faces the really big guns.

But lets not take anything away from a really fine performance. Well done, Rafa, and he now faces Gael Monfils in the semi-final. VAMOS!!