Rafael Nadal has reached the quarter-finals of Barcelona without any problems. On Wednesday the Spaniard beat his compatriot Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6:1, 6:3 and Nadal won his last 40 sets on clay.
At the score of 1:2 Nadal secured the first break of the game in the first set with a stop ball worth seeing. Another break in the sixth game secured Nadal the first round after 33 minutes.
Nine games in a row were played by the Mallorcan, who quickly went 4-0 in the second set. However, Garcia-Lopez countered, showed a strong 15 minutes and won three games in a row with a break and scored 3:4, but shortly after Nadal’s 397th match was on clay.
In the quarter-finals, Martin Klizan, who kicked out the tournament’s number 12 player Feliciano Lopez after his opening win over Novak Djokovic on Wednesday, is now waiting. In Beijing 2014, Klizan defeated Nadal, but Nadal won the last two of the three duels.
Grigor Dimitrov used all his experience to fend off two match points against Malek Jaziri and advance to the quarter-finals. At 5:6 and in the tiebreak at 7:8, the Bulgarian saw himself as a loser before leaving the field after two hours and 50 minutes with 7:5, 3:6 and 7:6(8). This was Dimitrov’s revenge for his defeat against Jaziri in February when he failed against the Tunisian in Dubai.
Dimitrov will now face Pablo Carreno Busta, who is seeded to five and has three chances to win the match against Adrian Mannarino himself. He won 6:2, 4:6, 7:6(6).