Rafael Nadal secured its fourth Davis Cup victory, Nadal defeated Jan Hájek in the first Davis Cup dead rubber of his career. Nadal finished the year as No. 2 for the fourth time in five years. Nadal won the Golden Bagel Award for the third time in 2009, with nine 6–0 sets during the year. Nadal began the year by participating in the Capitala World Tennis Championship in Abu Dhabi. In the final, Nadal defeated Robin Söderling in straight sets. Nadal participated in the Qatar ExxonMobil Open ATP 250 event in Doha, where he lost in the finals to Nikolay Davydenko. In
2009 French Open I would think. At some point, Nadal was going to lose. But nobody expected it to happen today, and maybe not this year. Now it's a matter of: There's a tournament to be won." Nadal would begin another streak the next year, and did not lose another match at the tournament until the 2015 French Open, when he lost to Novak Djokovic. After nearly a year out of the sport due to a serious shoulder injury which forced her to miss the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2008 US Open and her Australian Open title defence, Maria Sharapova, who started at