Rafael Nadal defeated American James Blake 3-6 6-3 6-1 on Wednesday to advance to the semi-finals of the Sony Ericsson Open.
After dropping his first three career matches with Blake, the Spaniard took advantage of 31 unforced errors to knock-out his American rival in one hour 55 minutes and set up a last-four contest with Tomas Berdych.
Czech Berdych progressed with a 6-4 6-4 defeat of Russia's Igor Andreev.
The 21-year-old Nadal, who defeated Blake two weeks ago in quarter-finals at Indian Wells, reached the final here in 2005 but lost a tough five-set match to Roger Federer, who rallied from two sets down.
Nadal reached the semi-finals of a tournament for the fourth time this year, doing so in Chennai, as well as the Australian Open and Indian Wells but is still chasing a first title.
‘In the three most important tournaments this year on hard courts, I was in the semi-finals in all three,’ Nadal said. ‘So I think I'm playing well and my opinion is that I am playing much better here than I was in Australia.
‘Right now I am feeling like I am playing at my best level, so that's important for me come to the clay season with more confidence, too. But at the same time, it is disappointing, because right now we are about to finish the hard season and then I'm playing better than before.’
Blake was understandably upset with the loss.
‘It's much more disappointing when you feel like you don't necessarily play your game and go down the way you want to,’ the 28-year-old said. ‘Not that you ever want to go down, but if you do, you want to play your game.
‘Today I felt like towards the end of the match I was playing much, much too passive, and that's frustrating.’
Nadal opened the year by losing to Mikhail Youzhny in the Chennai final, while Blake was stunned in the Delray Beach championship by Japan's Kei Nishikori, who was ranked 244th at the time.
The quarter-finals in the top of draw, which will be played on Thursday, will see top seed Federer face Andy Roddick and fourth seed Nikolay Davydenko take on unseeded Janko Tipsarevic.
