Tennis
Each year, the Godó, Barcelona's Open Tennis Competition, sees some of the world's best clay tennis players come to the city
World no.2 Rafael Nadal begins his defence of the Barcelona Open this week, as he looks to win a second successive tournament after his 6-3 6-1 Monte Carlo Rolex Masters victory over Novak Djokovic in Sunday's final.
His closest challengers are likely to be world no.4 Andy Murray, Spanish compatriot David Ferrer who he defeated in last year's final and Serbian Janko Tipsarevic. Spaniards Nicolas Almagro, Feliciano Lopez and 2010 winner Fernando Verdasco are also among the top-10 seeds. No.4 seed Tomas Berdych was forced to retire prior to the tournament after being sidelined with a shoulder injury.
The first round sees the top eight seeds automatically advance to the second round. Rafael Nadal will match up against either world no.78 Guillermo Garcia-Lopez or Belgian Olivier Rochus tomorrow whilst Andy Murray faces Ukrainian Sergiy Stakhovsky on centre-court later today in a tournament which has seen him win only one of four previous matches. The biggest upset of the tournament so far was the triumph of world no.54 Santiago Giraldo over Uzbekistani Denis Istomin.
The Trofeo Conde de Godo, now in its 60th year, has been won by a Spaniard on the past nine occasions (won six times in the last seven years by Rafael Nadal). Can this year prove to be any different?
A full schedule of the tournament can be found here.