Madrid: Spain’s Rafael Nadal returns a shot to Steve Johnson of the US during their match at the Madrid Open on Wednesday.—AFP

MADRID: Rafael Nadal lifted his clay-court record over Americans to a perfect 10-0 as he beat Steve Johnson 6-4, 6-3 to reach the Madrid Open third round on Wednesday while Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova survived marathon three-setters.

The third seed and defending champion Nadal improved to 12-3 on clay in 2015 thanks to his win in an hour and a quarter as the French Open champion aims to extend his streak of winning at least one European clay-court title in the run-up to Roland Garros to 11 consecutive years.

Defending women’s champion Sharapova advanced to the quarter-finals by beating Caroline Garcia of France 6-2, 4-6, 7-5. The third-seeded Russian, who is making her sixth appearance at the Madrid tournament, broke her opponent’s serve five times but was broken three times.

She was joined in the quarters by world number one Serena after Victoria Azarenka suffered a stunning meltdown and blew three match points against the top seed before losing 7-6 (7-5), 3-6, 7-6 (7-1). Azarenka served for the match at 6-5 and 40-0 in the third set but fell to pieces.

Serena fought back to 30-40 before Azarenka served three consecutive double faults to lose the game and was then defeated in the resulting tiebreak.

“She almost hit an ace, she missed it by not even three centimeters, I thought ‘wow’,” Serena, who next faces either Ana Ivanovic, the Serbian seventh seed, or Spanish 10th seed Carla Suarez Navarro, said.

“This is definitely an escape. I’ve had some other escapes, but I don’t think I’ve been down love-40 on someone’s serve before.”

Ivanovic beat Elina Svitolina of Ukraine 6-3, 6-4 in Tuesday’s late action.

Fourth seed Petra Kvitova played some of her best tennis of the week to see off Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-1, 6-4 in little more than an hour, committing only eight unforced errors.

The powerful Czech will play Romania’s Irina-Camelia Begu for a place in the semi-finals while Sharapova’s next opponent will be former world number one Caroline Wozniacki who beat Agnieszka Radwanska 6-3, 6-2. Begu beat Barbora Strycova of the Czech Republic 6-4, 6-4.

In the men’s draw, seventh seed David Ferrer faced a repeat of his second-round match in Madrid last year but this time had no trouble crushing fellow Spaniard Albert Ramos 6-4 6-0, while sixth seed Tomas Berdych beat weekend Estoril winner Richard Gasquet 7-6 (7-3) 7-5.

Fernando Verdasco knocked out US Open champion Marin Cilic 6-7 (5-7), 7-6 (7-5), 6-3, John Isner, the 16th seed, fired 23 aces to defeat Brazil’s Thomaz Bellucci 7-6 (7-5), 6-7 (11-13), 6-1 and Simone Bolelli beat Luca Vanni 4-6, 6-3, 6-2.

In first-round matches on Tuesday, Estoril finalist Nick Kyrgios of Australia beat Daniel Gimeno-Traver of Spain 6-2, 6-3 to set up a match with top seed Roger Federer.

Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain advanced to the second round with a 7-5, 6-3 victory over Marius Copil while Jack Sock of the United States beat Spain’s Pablo Andujar 6-4, 7-5.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2015

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