Nadal Wins 5th Consecutive Monte Carlo AMS Title

World #1 Rafael Nadal defeated World #3 Novak Djokovic in a hard-fought, high-quality, 3-set match 6-3, 2-6, 6-1 to claim his 5th consecutive Monte Carlo Masters Series title. Every year since 2005 that Nadal has won Monte Carlo, he has also won the French Open. That is, 5 years in a row. For the last two years he had faced former World #1 Roger Federer in the final of Monte Carlo as well as facing him in the Roland Garros final and had been victorious (in both settings) every time.

However, Djokovic (and earlier, World #4 Andy Murray) showed this week that they are closing the distance between Nadal on clay.

With his win today, Nadal now ties Federer in second position behind Andre Agassi's 17 masters series titles with 14 AMS titles each. There are two more clay Masters Series titles this season (Rome and Hamburg Madrid) before the clay Grand Slam at Roland Garros in Paris at the end of May.

It looks to me very likely that Nadal will end the year with the most Masters Series titles of all time.