Nadal cruises again; Djokovic to face Nalbandian in qaurters

Five-time defending champion Rafael Nadal fired a message of intent to his clay-court rivals on Thursday, when he thumped Michael Berrer of Germany 6-0, 6-1 in just 55 minutes for a place in the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters quarter-finals.

The Spaniard came close to the first double-bagel result of his career, but hit a backhand wide when Berrer led 40/30 in the sixth game of the second set. Through the first 11 games of the pair’s second meeting, Berrer had won just 11 points. He won 18 of 69 points overall.

Nadal, who extended his winning streak to 29 matches at the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 clay-court tournament, has won a 6-0 set on 48 occasions in his professional career. On Wednesday, he beat former junior World No. 1 Thiemo de Bakker 6-1, 6-0.

In 514 career matches, this is the first time Nadal has dropped only one game in back-to-back tour-level matches (seventh time overall). "I played better than yesterday because I played higher, I played close to the lines, and my feeling is I had more control on the ball," said Nadal.

Top-seeded Serbian Novak Djokovic will take nothing for granted when he meets former World No. 3 David Nalbandian of Argentina in the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters quarter-finals on Friday. Djokovic leads 2-1 overall, with their last meeting coming in June 2008 at the AEGON Championships.

Djokovic knocked out No. 13 seed Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland 6-4, 6-4 in a repeat of last year’s semi-final on Thursday evening. He now holds an 8-2 lead over Wawrinka, after his victory in one hour and 42 minutes. He hit 12 winners, committed 32 unforced errors, converted four of 10 break point opportunities.

Both players exchanged service breaks at the start of the match and it remained level to 4-4, before Djokovic earned his second break with a crosscourt forehand winner. He closed out the first set to love.

Wawrinka, made a forehand error in the third game of the second set and a second successive service game was gifted to Djokovic. Wawrinka fought back and had one break point opportunity at 4/5, 30/40 on the Djokovic serve. All three points went the Serbian’s way courtesy of backhand errors.


Thursday, 15 April 2010

Singles - Third Round
[1] N Djokovic (SRB) d [13] S Wawrinka (SUI) 64 64
[2] R Nadal (ESP) d M Berrer (GER) 60 61
A Montanes (ESP) d [4] M Cilic (CRO) 64 64
[11] D Ferrer (ESP) d [8] I Ljubicic (CRO) 60 76(4)
[9] J Ferrero (ESP) d [5] J Tsonga (FRA) 61 36 75
[6] F Verdasco (ESP) d [10] T Berdych (CZE) 57 63 62
D Nalbandian (ARG) d [12] T Robredo (ESP) 63 64
P Kohlschreiber (GER) d P Petzschner (GER) 63 64