Djokovic Can't Stop Nadal's Monte Carlo Reign

Despite Rafael Nadal's failures against Novak Djokovic throughout 2011, he continues his reign at the Monte Carlo Country Club by demolishing the world no. 1 in the final 6-3, 6-1.  Nadal has now won on unbelievable 8 consecutive crowns at the season's first clay court Masters.

Nadal is still quite a ways behind Djokovic for world no. 1 but has widened his lead over Federer after the latter didn't play Monte Carlo this year and lost those 180 points.  The points are a little difficult to follow this year because it seems like most of the tournaments were moved back a week, which must be natural every 5-6 years but also because we've had 2 Davis Cup weeks already.

Back to the present, Nadal wins his 47th career title, but just the first of this year and first since the '11 French Open.  Of his 47 titles, 33 have come on clay.  It is his record 20th Masters title, he now leads Federer by 1.  This win will give Nadal plenty of confidence going into the rest of the clay season, and one would guess he'll win his 7th Barcelona title next weekend.  This also shows Djokovic is not playing on 2011 form and has been brought down to earth so to speak, so we could have a very interesting Madrid, Rome, and French Open. Also we have not heard anything for Federer yet on the clay so he may yet be a player on the red stuff.

Also in Monte Carlo, Berdych and Simon got nice wins over Murray and Tsonga, respectively.  Berdych seems to be back in form after a rough past few weeks while Simon followed up an Indian Wells QF with another nice result.  We'll see if this translates into better results in the next few weeks for these two.

I'll have a full rundown of the women's Fed Cup action later.