Quarter-Final day at the Open Sabadell Atlantico Barcelona 2008.

There are no less than 5 Spanish players in the Last 8 of this week tournament here in Barcelona, including the top 2 seeds Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer.

First on stage was local resident Albert Montanes against Stanislas Wawrinka. It was a marathon match in a very hot day, especially at this time of the day, between noon and 3. Wawrinka played very strong in the first set, saving the only break point he faced. Then in the second set he was down a break before levelling up the match at 5-5. In the tie-break he was trailing by 3-0 before he reached match point, but it was on Montanes serve. Montanes saved it and on his first set point he lets himself some hope. But he conceded twice his serve in the deciding set and gave the win to Stanislas Wawrinka in 2h48.

Then the all-countrymen match between David Ferrer and Tommy Robredo was underway. Ferrer had an early break of serve to lead 3-0. Then the encounter really started to give a lot of long exchanges. Robredo was broke twice in this first set and managed to came back to battle it out in a tie-break. Ferrer got his mind together to win it 7 points to 4. The pair last meet two weeks ago in the Semi-final in Valencia, it was the same end today as Ferrer with two more breaks of serve sealed a precious victory in over 2h 7-6 6-4.

Rafael Nadal was on stage next against Juan Ignacio Chela of Argentina. Chela started the match very well as he broke the first to lead 4-2, but the most important thing in big matches is to keep his serve after a break. And the 7th game was the most important of the match. It lasted about 20 min with both players having their chances and eventually Nadal got the break of serve to tie the match at 4-4, and then it was over as Chela seemed not able to recover from this particulars game. Nadal went out to victory 6-4 6-2.

In the last match, Nicolas Almagro was playing against the German Denis Gremelmayr. The German ranked 85 in the world put a lot of trouble in the Semis of Estoril at Roger Federer and proved to the world that he is a good clay court player. After two similar sets, the first one won by Gremelmayr 6-2 and the second one 6-3 for Almagro were none of the wining player faced a single break points, they had to battle it out through a deciding set who went to a tie-break where the German took his chances and after 2h09 he reached match point to win it 9 points to 7. He will next face Nadal for his second ATP semi final of his career.