Nadal demolishes Haas in classy display

Andrew Dent

Spain's Rafael Nadal gave a tennis masterclass on the Rod Laver Arena as he demolished German Tommy Haas 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 in the third round of the Australian Open on Saturday.

Haas played some magnificent tennis at times, however Nadal was able to take command at will, with the power of his groundstrokes constantly stranding his opponent either at the baseline or the net.

Nadal conceded later that he had never played better at the Australian Open.

"I think I played my best match in Australia tonight," he said.

"I'm very happy with the level of my performance."

But in a warning to his rivals he stressed there was still room for improvement.

"Perfect matches don't exist," he said when asked how he could possibly play any better.

"But today, especially after a few games, after the first three or four games, I started to play well."

Haas served first against the Spaniard then shocked the large crowd when he broke Nadal to take a 2-0 lead.

"In the beginning I was playing too short a little bit and Tommy had control of the points," Nadal said.

"But that changed after the first few games." Nadal was stung by the loss of the early games and broke back immediately and then again two games later, holding on to take a high quality first set in 51 minutes.

Both men were playing some superb tennis but Nadal always seemed to have the edge over the German world number 84.

He broke Haas in the fifth and seventh games and took a firm grip on the match when he won the second set in 43 minutes.

Haas opened the third with a comfortable service game but Nadal struck again to break the next one and the writing was on the wall.

He raced through the set to take the match in a touch over two hours, setting up a fourth round clash with Chilean 13th seed Fernando Gonzalez who beat Frenchman Richard Gasquet in a five set, four-hour epic.

"Hopefully that will affect him a lot," Nadal said with a smile.

"But I don't think that's going to happen, no?

"He didn't play in the sun, with the heat. That's going to be an important factor.

"And, well, for sure he's going to be a little bit more tired.

"But he's very strong, no? He's a very strong player physically, and at the same time he's going to be playing with more confidence than ever, no, because he beat a big player like Richard, and he had a very good comeback.

"So that's very important for the confidence."

MELBOURNE, Sunday, AFP