Nadal Powers On
sportinglife.com
July 22nd, 2005
Rafael Nadal continued his superb claycourt season with a convincing thrashing of Tomas Zib of the Czech Republic in the Mercedes Cup on Friday.
The Spanish ace trounced Zib 6-2 6-1 to reach the semi-finals of the Stuttgart-based tournament and pick up his 32nd consecutive claycourt victory.
In all, the 19-year-old has won 47 of 49 matches on clay in 2005 and all seven of his titles this year have come on the surface, including the Tennis Masters Series event in Monte Carlo and the French Open.
Nadal has dropped just 11 games in his three matches here this week.
"At the moment I feel really good, have a good feeling for the ball and am always in control of what is happening" Nadal said.
In Saturday's semi-finals, Nadal will face Finn Jarkko Nieminen, who posted a 6-2 6-3 victory over Italian Andreas Seppi."It will of course be a difficult match as I have never played against him, but I know that he is a very hard opponent" Nadal said of Nieminen.
"I am sure that I will have to do my very best, but if I play like yesterday and today, then I think that I will have a chance".
Nieminen said: "That will be a very hard match as it is always hard to win against him even if you are playing really well".
"He simply doesn't give anything away and is 100% concentrated for every ball".
Second seed Nikolay Davydenko also reached the last four, defeating 11th-seeded Czech Tomas Berdych 6-4 6-2.
The Russian will now face number three Gaston Gaudio with the Argentinian beating his countryman Mariano Zabaleta 6-4 1-6 6-2.
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