It was billed up as an exciting clash. Nicolas Almagro, on the back of a final at Buenos Aires, against Rafa Nadal, with a lot of questions to answer. However it turned out being an erratic match which Nadal took 6-3, 7-5, and which was largely down to Almagro’s mistakes more than the former world number one’s strong showing.
The signs continue to be worrying ahead of this season for Rafa Nadal, who surprisingly struggled more with his forehand than his backhand, and almost limited himself to pushing the ball into play. Almagro dominated the exchanges from the back but struggled to perform consistently and no greater example of this came in the second set where there were five consecutive breaks of serve. The most controversial moment coming when Nadal broke for 6-5 after the umpire judged an Almagro forehand to have gone long. The player from Murcia wasn’t convinced and had a heated exchange with the umpire after seeing the ball mark following the changeover. “Shameful, shameful”, could be heard from Almagro’s lips as he didn’t manage to leave the incident behind and committed mistakes which were born from a player playing with anger instead of a clear mind.
This helped Nadal over the finish line but by no means did it leave anyone optimistic with regards to where his tennis is at the moment. Now he faces Dolgopolov, in a repeat of the 2014 final, and most importantly, the Ukrainian has beaten the Spaniard in their last two meetings.
Dolgopolov reached the quarter finals after coming back from a set down to defeat another Spanish player, Iñigo Cervantes. Federico Delbonis also got through with a commanding 6-3, 6-0 win over Paolo Lorenzi, Guido Pella made it two Argentines in the final eight with a 6-4, 6-0 victory against Santi Giraldo and David Ferrer took another all-Spanish duel 4-6, 6-1, 6-4.
