Rafael Nadal ousts Garcia-Lopez to sail into last 8

This was Nadal’s 55th win in 58 matches in Barcelona and it was a much easier day in the office for him compared to Wednesday’s match against Roberto Carballes Baena where he had to stay on the court for almost 2 hours.

Nadal lost his serve just once and he controlled the pace from the very beginning, winning 10 of the opening 11 games to sprint towards a 6-1 4-0 lead, outplaying Garcia-Lopez in the rallies. He started to play better from that point and he showed much better tennis to match Nadal’s pace and win three games before Nadal closed the match with his fifth break of the match to set up the quarter-final meeting with Martin Klizan.

Grigor Dimitrov drew upon his big match experience in saving two match points to beat Malek Jaziri for a place in the  quarter-finals. Second seed Dimitrov saved two match points at 5-6, 30/40 and at 7/8 in the tie-break of the deciding set en route to a 7-5, 3-6, 7-6(8) victory in two hours and 50 minutes. Jaziri had previously earned his first Top 10 win against Dimitrov in February at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships. 

Austria’s Dominic Thiem recorded his 12th win in 15 clay-court matches on Thursday for a place in the quarter-finals.

The third seed and last year’s finalist, one of the best performers in clay-courts matches over the past two years, didn’t have things all his own way in a 7-6(5), 6-2 victory over Slovakian Jozef Kovalik in one hour and 44 minutes. Thiem, with a 21-5 match record on the season, which includes his ninth ATP World Tour crown at the Argentina Open (d. Bedene), will now challenge Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas or No. 10 seed Albert Ramos-Vinolas of Spain.

World No. 146 Kovalik broke for a 3-2 lead, but Thiem won the next three games. Thiem won five of the first six points in the tie-break, closing out on his fourth set point opportunity. Thiem carried the momentum into the second set, including service breaks in the first, fifth and seventh games.