Fernando arrived in Barcelona yesterday evening and this morning, he and Robin Soderling were invited to do a little promo work for the Barcelona Open BancSabadell. They played a little rooftop tennis on the 21st-floor of the W Hotel.

“This was great, I hadn’t been there before so I was really curious about how it was going to look,” said Verdasco. “It was really impressive how they managed to fit a small tennis court up there.” Added Soderling: “That was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it and it’s great to be able to do different and new things like that. The hotel and court were really impressive and the view was just spectacular.”

Robin also tweeted a photo of him and Fernando from today :)

Unfortunately Fernando lost 6-0, 6-1 to Rafa in the Monte Carlo final. The score doesn’t reflect how close at some times the match was (check out the amazing point below!) but Rafa was just too good from the first point.

Despite the loss, Fernando can take away some positives from this week. Not only did he reach his first ever masters semifinal, but he reached his first Masters final, and will re-enter the top ten at #9 this week. So despite a disappointing finish, his success in Monte Carlo will give him some confidence for the rest of the clay season. Barcelona next, where he will face either Richard Gasquet or Igor Andreev.

Here’s his post match presser:

(Apologies for not getting this posted sooner, I was having server issues that wouldn’t let me login to wordpress. Got it all sorted and now I can post!)