25th of April

Rafa Nadal remains on course for a record fifth straight Barcelona Open title after a comfortable third-round win over Belgium’s Christophe Rochus in straight sets, 6-2 6-0 and an unexpected walkover into the last four when his quarterfinal opponent, David Nalbandian was forced to withdraw with a hip injury.

“I feel bad for him actually, I knew he had something bothering him and I just hope he gets better soon”, said Rafa.

Then he continued, “It's not nice to reach the semi-finals like this, but I have to be positive. I'm in the semis of Barcelona and that's always a good thing. I will try to do the best I can”.

Being the hard worker that he is, Rafa ‘The King of clay’ Nadal, took advantage of the additional day granted to have an “intense training session’ with his coach and he hopes it would be enough to help him through today’s semifinal match against Nikolay Davydenko, the number 3 seed, ranked 8th in the World.

Rafa leads Davydenko 3-2 in their head-to-head encounters and even though neither of Davydenko’s wins have been on clay, their first match on the dirt was an extremely close: Rafa won 7-6(3), 6-7(8), 6-4 in Rome in 2007.

The second time however (at last year’s Monte-Carlo Masters Series), Rafa was much more dominant as he cruised past the Russian in straight sets: 6-3, 6-2.

While all the statistics favor Rafa, Davydenko remains optimistic and has joked about beating the number one. "It's a secret: if I tell the press, he will read it”, then he continued on a more serious tone, “The odds are 100 per cent [in favour of] Rafa. You never know about tomorrow, but I’m not going to worry about it now. I’m going to relax and enjoy my life.

TODAY’S ORDER OF PLAY

Rafa is scheduled to play second on Center Court at 1:30pm (local time)

Vamos Rafa!