Word: normal
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...many of Iran's 65 million people, responsibility for the downturn has settled on one man: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. International sanctions have tightened during Ahmadinejad's fiery presidency, resulting in oil exports dominating Iran's economy even more than normal. According to energy analysts and economists, Ahmadinejad has also spent billions of dollars from Iran's Oil Stabilization Fund, which is supposed to act as a safety net during an oil crash, to pay for social programs for his millions of supporters, most of whom are poor - though there is little public accounting for where the money has gone...
...shot so that the Spaniard plays not less classically but more classically. As Nadal prepares for this year's first grand slam event, in Australia beginning Jan. 19, the top seed and his coach seem to be posing a new challenge: Can tennis's great outsider win by embracing normal? (See pictures of an alternative look at Wimbledon...
...Andre Agassi, one of the game's great shotmakers, generated 1,900 rotations per minute in his prime, and current world No. 2 Roger Federer, whose forehand is considered among the game's best, generates 2,700. As U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe has said of Nadal, "His normal safe forehand is the toughest shot in the world...
...carry his own bags and racquets when at tournaments. He still lives with his parents. His girlfriend, 20-year-old Maria Francisca Perello, is a student in Majorca whom Nadal met through family friends. "People see Nadal as some sort of rebel, but he's really just a normal guy, a normal Spaniard. He likes normal things and he lives a normal life," says his publicist Benito Perez-Barbadillo. Or, as Nadal puts it, "I'm happy all the time. But I'm most happy at home...
...Fans love Nadal because he seems so real. Even his most deliberate calculations - to pick up the racquet in his left hand and hit the ball in a way nobody has before - seem to stem from a subversive instinct. For tennis's antihero, on the court at least, normal might be a step...