Rafael Nadal in action at the Hamburg Open on Thursday

The win sets up Nadal to play clay specialist Pablo Cuevas on Friday in the quarterfinals.

Rafael Nadal eased into the Hamburg Open quarter-finals yesterday with a 6-4, 7-6 (7/2) win over Jiri Vesely of the Czech Republic as the Spaniard continues to try and resuscitate his flagging season.

Paire, fresh from lifting his first ATP Tour title at Bastad on Sunday, saw a seven-game winning streak broken as he was comfortably beaten 6-3 6-2 by Pouille – who sits 43 places below him at 85th in the rankings.

Andreas Seppi completed a good day for the seeds in Hamburg as he survived an early scare to beat wildcard Florian Mayer 4-6 6-2 6-3. Pavlyuchenkova had won the only previous meeting between the two in straight sets and the Russian repeated the feat with a 6-1, 6-3 win in just 62 minutes in the Azerbaijan capital. Nadal’s semifinal opponent will be Andreas Seppi, who reached the last four without having to play.

Nadal appeared in trouble during Thursday’s match when he dropped his serve for 4-4 in the second set.

“I played I think 90 per cent of the match doing the right things, doing the right shots every time and waiting for my moment”, said Nadal.

Set two was even more straightforward, as the world No. 10 positively dominated on serve. Cuevas has continued his upwards momentum in 2015, winning Sao Paolo and finishing runner-up to Roger Federer in Istanbul, but he has struggled to make an impact outside of clay or at bigger events than a 250. This is his first tournament since losing to Dustin Brown in the second round of Wimbledon.

That said, Nadal certainly won’t object to an easier victory over fifth seed Pablo Cuevas in the quarterfinals. Cuevas lost to Nadal in Rio in February in match that ended at 3:18am.

The left-handed Bellucci, who won the Gstaad clay-court title in 2009 and 2012, dominated on serve against the 21-year-old from Belgium.

In other quarter-final results, another Italian, Fabio Fognini, defeated Britain’s Aljaz Bedene 6-4, 7-5, and French qualifier Lucas Pouille routed countryman and second seed Benoit Paire 6-3, 6-2.