PARIS (AP)—A rain shower stopped play at Roland Garros for a minute or two in the middle of Rafael Nadal's quarterfinal.
Nicolas Almagro? He couldn't do anything to slow Rafa at his favorite tournament.
Second-seeded Nadal defeated his fellow Spaniard 7-6 (4), 6-2, 6-3 on Wednesday to move to the French Open semifinals, two wins away from a record seventh title on the red clay of Paris.
Nadal, who shares the Roland Garros record with Bjorn Borg, hasn't lost a set through his first five matches this year. Against the 12th-seeded Almagro, he faced four break points but saved them all. He improved to 50-1 lifetime at Roland Garros, with the only loss coming to Robin Soderling in 2009.
Nadal's next match will be against the winner of a quarterfinal between David Ferrer and Andy Murray that got delayed early in the third set when a bigger rain shower passed through, a few minutes after Nadal left the court.
It means he'll have a few hours of extra rest before the semifinals Friday, though he hardly needs it. Including the 2 hours, 46 minutes he took to dispatch Almagro, Nadal has spent a grand total of 10 hours, 37 minutes on the court. Novak Djokovic, by comparison, spent only 2 hours, 10 minutes less than that grinding out his past two matches - five-set wins over Andreas Seppi and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
Almagro pushed Nadal in the first set, taking him to a tiebreaker and cutting a 5-1 deficit to 5-4. But Nadal responded by closing out the set with a big forehand down the line that Almagro couldn't handle, then a 121 mph serve that Almagro couldn't return.
Four times over the next two sets, Almagro had chances to break. He made unforced errors on two of them, left an overhead short for an easy putaway on another and Nadal hit an unreturnable serve on No. 4. Nothing to be ashamed of, though. Nadal has lost serve only once during the tournament and saved 16 of 17 break points.
Before Nadal's match, second-seeded woman Maria Sharapova defeated Kaia Kanepi of Estonia 6-2, 6-3 and the No. 4 seed, Petra Kvitova, beat 142nd-ranked qualifier Yaroslava Shvedova, 3-6, 6-2, 6-4. Sharapova and Kvitova will meet Thursday in a rematch of last year's Wimbledon final, where Kvitova won her first Grand Slam tournament.