Tennis

Rafa Nadal Celebrated His Win In Acapulco In Style

You might not have heard about it, since, well, it’s a second-tier tournament and second-tier tournaments don’t get a lot of attention, but a pretty significant development in tennis happened over the weekend: Rafael Nadal got his most impressive wins yet since returning to competitive tennis from ongoing knee issues. He triumphed in a tournament in Acapulco without dropping a set in five matches (in fact, he was never even forced into a tiebreak), and had to beat two quality players – Nicolas Almagro and world No. 4 David Ferrer – in the semis and finals. And he didn’t just beat Ferrer – he crushed him, 6-0, 6-2.

In other words, if you were thinking Rafa’s knee woes were about to leave the door wide open for a changing of the guard at the French Open, think again – so far, he seems to be getting on track well enough that he should be at something approaching peak form when Roland Garros rolls around. If you’re, say, Novak Djokovic, this might not be the most welcome news. But if you’re a fan of good tennis, it’s something to celebrate, and if you’re Nadal, it’s really something to celebrate.

And celebrate he did. Tennis tournaments sometimes give their victors unusual ways to celebrate. Just as the Australian Open has been known to add some local flavor to the winner’s trophy in the form of a stuffed kangaroo (we think?), Acapulco also gets its winner into the local spirit. How do they do it? You see it above: a sombrero, in the style you might expect to see members of a mariachi band sport. But you wouldn’t expect to see it on Nadal… which makes it way funnier. Check the photos below and see if you don’t agree.

And for you more internetty types, the trophy reminded us of something… enough that we felt compelled to create the lastest edition of SportsGrid Bad Photoshop Theater. Feast your eyes:

Photos via Getty