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BARCELONA, May 4: Top seed Rafael Nadal will meet David Ferrer in an all-Spanish showdown at the Barcelona Open after contrasting semi-final victories on Saturday.
Nadal produced a claycourt masterclass to demolish German Denis Gremelmayr 6-1, 6-0 while Ferrer had to work much harder to tame big-hitting Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka 7-6, 6-3.
World No 2 Nadal, trying to win the title for the fourth successive year, was in irrepressible form as he raced to victory over Gremelmayr in 50 minutes.
Gremelmayr, who took a set off world No 1 Roger Federer in Estoril, had beaten three seeded players – James Blake, Dmitry Tursunov and Almagro – en route to the last four but was totally outclassed by a rampant Nadal.
The German world No 85 held his opening service game but that was as good as it got as Nadal tore him apart.
Second seed Ferrer looked in trouble when world No 27 Wawrinka served for the opening set at 5-4 having broken in the fifth game.
But the Swiss cracked under pressure and although he forced a set point in the tiebreak, Ferrer saved it and won the tiebreak 10-8 to move ahead.
The world No 5 then broke in the fifth game of the second set and again in the ninth game to reach his second final of the year after winning the Valencia Open last month.
TOP SEED OUSTED
MUNICH (Germany): Italian Simone Bolelli upset French top seed Paul-Henri Mathieu 7-6, 4-6, 7-6 to reach the final of the Munich Open on Saturday.
The unseeded 22-year-old Bolelli took the deciding set tiebreak 7-4 to seal victory in just over three hours and set up a meeting with second seed Fernando Gonzalez of Chile in the final of the claycourt event.
Gonzalez had earlier came through another tight semi-final, seeing off the 36-year-old Moroccan Younes El Aynaoui 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 to take his place in the final.—Reuters
