Oh Happy Day !!!

Tengo muchas ganas de volvera lapista en Abu Dhabi! Gané el Mundial de Mubadala en 2010 y 2011, este año me... fb.me/1Iy4PMiVF
— Rafa Nadal (@RafaelNadal) December 11, 2012

It all started this morning with this exciting tweet and Facebook entry from Rafa ...

"Can’t wait to get back on court in Abu Dhabi at the end of the month. I won the Mubadala World Tennis Championship in 2010 and 2011 – would love to get my hands on the trophy again this year!"

Now to get such positive words from Rafa about his return and all but confirmation of his attendance at the exho in Abu Dhabi is just a fantastic early Christmas present for us fans. What great news!!!

And as the day progressed, we got more encouraging words from Rafa which were brought to us by IB3's David Nadal (@davidjnadal) who has some English translations if you want to follow the link to his Twitter timeline. Equally, @genny_ss has also done some translating which you can read for yourself on her Twitter timeline here, but I've brought a collection of some of them over for you to gloss over ...

Rafa's words this morning: "I'm happy with the improvement. The knee is behaving quite well." 

"Week by week, I'm increasing the intensity of work. Medically, the injury is being left behind." 

"The most important thing is that the knee allows me to practice in the way I want, and so far things, are going well." 

"My goal is to reach Acapulco well prepared and then be really fit for Indian Wells and Miami."

Toni continued by saying that Rafa's intensity level during training is now very close to that which is needed for competition, and that they trust he will be able to train at 100% next week.

And then came this tweet ...

On Dec 26, the Nadals plan to go to Abu Dhabi
— David J. Nadal (@davidjnadal) December 11, 2012

However, just as a precautionary word, Toni did state that if Rafa doesn't feel he's at 100%, then they won't make the trip as there is no point ruining all the hard word just for one week.

I find all of this very, very positive but again, they're still taking a stepped approach. Obviously what Rafa has done to date is working fine and he's practicing at the moment at the level he wants to be at. It still has to be stepped up, they'll do that next week, and hopefully Rafa will also react well to this. They obviously have every intention in travelling, but quite right that they don't risk all that Rafa has been through these past 6 months for the sake of a week.

But he sounds positive.  Excellent news! Keep going Rafa!!  Fingers, toes and everything else still  crossed.  VAMOS!!