The Spaniard Rafael Nadal keeps leaving his mark in the tennis world and he is definitely trying to demonstrate that he's not only great on the clay-courts. Just a week after he was crowned in Paris with his fourth Roland Garros title, Rafael Nadal received one more trophy but this time at the Queen's Club in London in the Artois Championship, last Sunday June 15th, 2008.

Nadal had no troubles in the transition from clay to grass and had a great week in the Queen's Club Championship. He defeated Croatian Ivo Karlovic in the quarterfinals and the four-time defeating champion Andy Roddick in the semifinals. Then he went to defeat the Serbian Novak Djokovic in the championship final, capturing his first ATP title in grass. He also became the first Spanish player to win Queens. Nadal became also the second player in the Open era to win this tournament after winning Roland Garros; the only player that accomplished this before him was Ilie Nastase in 1973.

Nadal had a difficult start in his first Queen's Club final; he lost the first 3 games of the opening set and was about to lose the fourth one, however, his tenacity made him recover his game and forced a tie-break to win the first set 7-6.

The second set between this year's Grand Slam winners (Australian Open and French Open) was equally thrilling, despite at the start Nadal broke for a 2-0 lead, Djokovic refused to go down and managed to tie the set 2-2 and later saving two more break points forced it to 4-4. Nevertheless Nadal hold the serve and broke back finishing the second and last set of the tournament 7-5.

The Artois Championship is part of the International Series of the ATP Tour and is one of the four grass court tournaments in the run-up to Wimbledon. It is very popular in Britain and the Queen's Club tennis courts are regarded amongst the best in the world. This tournament is also considered to be a "Wimbledon champions producer" as 22 of the last 25 Wimbledon champions have played in it, even though current grass court dominant player Roger Federer prefers to play the Gerry Weber Open, tournament also on grass and held in Halle, Germany at the same time than the Queen's Club every year, the week just after the French Open. Federer has won the Halle title five times, including this year's championship.

Rafael Nadal's odds to win Wimbledon have been cut to 2-1 after his victory at Queens. The third Grand Slam of the year will begin next Monday June 23 in England. The World No. 1 Roger Federer has been the owner of Wimbledon's title for the last five years and Nadal has been the runner-up for the last two, so it could be expected that the history repeats itself this year and that we would be the delighted spectators of one more showdown between the best two tennis players of the world in a Grand Slam final.

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