You beauty !!!

Oh Rafa. You know sometimes you think you're going run out of superlatives when talking about this man ... and then he goes and amazes you one more time.

Irregardless of the H2H with Berdych, I had more worries about this match than I did with Feds ... but he was marvellous. Rafa played a really good first set, but it was still pretty close.

But in the second set, you could feel Berdych knocking on the door on each of Rafa's serves and when the pressure was on, this is the area where perhaps Rafa is still showing his rust ... he got nervous. A second serve luckily caught the net and went in to give Rafa yet another chance ... but the double fault and break still came.

But whilst Rafa may have his rust on the big points, his steely determination to fight, to scrap, to work hard, to lift his game, all of that is still there and never was it more in evidence than when Berdych served to take the second set ... and Rafa broke.

And he didn't win another game again. Rafa still showed his nerves when holding match points, but oh ... the sheer joy he expressed on victory was just immense. No Rafa, in all honestly we probably didn't expect to see you in the final of a hardcourt tournament this soon either. But you're there. And you totally deserve it.  Better still, that odious, foul-mouthed Serb was knocked out in splendid fashion by Juan Martin Del Potro.  Take that, you and all your equally obnoxious fans.

By the way, it's my birthday today ... so if Rafa could deliver the best of presents, how good would that be?? VAMOS RAFA!!