Nadal surges into last eight
World number one Rafael Nadal notched up his 50th win at the US Open yesterday to reach the quarter-finals for the seventh time.
The two-time champion, who could meet old rival Roger Federer in New York for the first time at the semi-final stage, crushed Ukraine's Alexander Dolgopolov 6-2, 6-4, 6-1.
The 31-year-old Spaniard goes on to face either 19-year-old Andrey Rublev of Russia or Belgian ninth seed David Goffin for a place in the last-four.
"I played a solid match with not many mistakes," said Nadal, the reigning French Open champion.
"He's a player who can play amazing shots but sometimes he can be very unpredictable with errors so I just waited for my opportunity."
Nadal, the 2010 and 2013 champion in New York, showed no signs of the struggles that bedeviled him in the two previous rounds, when he dropped the opening set before prevailing in four.
His 23 winners on Monday were just shaded by world number 64 Dolgopolov's 25 but the Ukrainian's 39 unforced errors were more than three times those committed by Nadal.
Meanwhile, top seed Kristina Pliskova, the runner-up in 2016, needed just 46 minutes to sweep past Jennifer Brady of the United States 6-1, 6-0 and make her third Slam quarter-final of 2017.
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