BASTAD: Rafael Nadal continued his Olympic preparations with a confident 6-4, 6-4 win over Cameron Norrie here at the Bastad Open on Thur­sday, showing signs of the power hitting that fired him to 14 French Open titles.

The 38-year-old Spaniard continued his return to winning ways on the Swedish clay as he moved into the quarter-finals, racking up his ninth Tour win of the year and back-to-back wins for the first time since reaching the last-16 of the Madrid Open in April.

“Great feelings now, I’ve been a while now without playing on the Tour since Roland Garros and had the chance to compete well against a great player like Cameron,” said Nadal during his on-court interview.

“I think I played, for moments, good tennis.”

Nadal now leads the former world number eight Briton 5-1 in their head-to-head record.

Nadal showed few signs of rustiness from the get-go against fifth-seed Norrie but then took a tumble on his backhand side in the first game of the second set and required brief medical attention on his left elbow at the change of ends.

The 2005 Bastad champion made a quick recovery and soon showed his pedigree on the clay.

The 22-time Grand Slam champion was unstoppable as he ground his opponent down with powerful, topspin-heavy ground strokes and won five games in a row to take the match in straight sets.

Nadal will next face Mar­iano Navone in the quarter-final, after the fourth-seed Argentinian earlier overcame India’s Sumit Nagal in straight sets.

The 23-year-old world number 36 is the highest seed left in the draw after Dutch third seed Tallon Griekspoor was earlier eliminated by Kazakh qualifier Timofey Skatov.

On Wednesday, Nadal and Casper Ruud saved a match point in the deciding set tie-break to reach the semi-finals of the doubles in Bastad, hours after the Norwegian was knocked out of the singles.

Nadal and Ruud squeezed past France’s Theo Arribage and Roman Safiullin of Russia 6-4, 3-6, 12/10 to advance to the last four, winning the final three points of the match after being on the brink of defeat.

Published in Dawn, July 19th, 2024