ACAPULCO (Mexico): Rafael Nadal accomplished his best beginning to an ATP Tour season on Tuesday, improving to 12-0 this year by overcoming Stefan Kozlov to arrive at the Mexican Open quarter-finals.
The 35-year-old Spanish left-hander disposed of the US fortunate washout 6-0, 6-3, progressing to a Thursday matchup against 39th-positioned American Tommy Paul, whom he has never played.
The triumph kept Nadal unbeaten north of twelve matches in 2022, his best vocation start to any year, outperforming the 11-0 altercation 2014 that finished with a misfortune to Swiss Stan Wawrinka in the Australian Open last.
Nadal won his men's record 21st Grand Slam title finally month's Australian Open, breaking the vocation characteristic of 20 Slam crowns he had imparted to Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer.
World number five Nadal, looking for his 91st profession ATP title and fourth Acapulco crown, likewise won a warm-up competition last month in Melbourne.
Nadal broke for a 2-0 lead when Kozlov got a strike and broke again on forehand crushes in the fourth and 6th games to clear the initial set in a short time.
One more forehand crush to break put Nadal ahead 3-1 in the subsequent set yet Kozlov crushed spirit inside 4-3 when Nadal got a strike volley.
Yet again kozlov gave back the break in the following game on a messed up strike and Nadal held development following 76 minutes.
Ruling US Open hero Daniil Medvedev, whom Nadal energized past in five sets in the Australian Open last, beat Spain's 68th-positioned Pablo Andujar 6-1, 6-2 to proceed with his journey for the world number one positioning.
"It's quite intense circumstances, very muggy. Regardless of whether we play around evening time it's very warm," second-positioned Medvedev said. "The quicker the matches, the better you will feel for the following one."
Assuming that Medvedev wins the Acapulco title, he is guaranteed of surpassing Djokovic on the rankings regardless of how the Serbian star admissions this week at Dubai.
Medvedev would turn into the 27th player to arrive at world number one and only the third Russian, joining Yevgeny Kafelnikov (1999) and Marat Safin (2000-01).
The last player outside of Djokovic, Nadal, Federer and Britain's Andy Murray to sit on the rankings was American Andy Roddick in February 2004.