'Tired' Rafa Nadal just happy to progress

Rafa Nadal suffered a late blip against unseeded Czech Radek Stepanek before reaching the quarter-finals of the Aegon Championship at Queen's Club yesterday.

The world No 1, fresh from his record-equalling sixth French Open title, looked in total command against Stepanek as he served for the match in the second set but a rare collapse kept the Spaniard on court for longer than he wanted before he walked off with a 6-3, 5-7, 6-1 victory.

Nadal is usually ruthless when an opponent is on the ropes, but serving at 5-3 in the second set he wasted two match points and then threw in a double fault to give Stepanek a lifeline.

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Then, at 5-5, he played another messy game and suddenly the Czech was serving for the second set, which he did in some style, levelling the match with a lunging volley. While the crowd, some of them perched on the balconies of the rambling Victorian clubhouse, loved it, Nadal was clearly not amused and stormed through the deciding set in quick time.

"I feel a little tired," said the Spaniard. The top seed admitted adjusting to his first singles match on grass this year was tricky, saying: "It's never easy at the start of the grass-court season. Everything is completely different, and you don't have a lot of days to adapt to the different surface. It's not enough, but I've progressed. I am a little bit tired because I had a tough Roland Garros and clay-court season but I am here to try my best like always."

Two French players were forced to withdraw injured. Gilles Simon retired with a back strain at 3-0 down in the third set against compatriot Adrian Mannarino in a second round match held up overnight and Michael Llodra quit with a thigh injury in the first set against fifth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Mannarino went on to beat Juan Martin del Potro in two tiebreaks and will now face defending champion Sam Querrey or British No 2 James Ward, who were last night locked at one set all when bad light stopped play. Croatian Marin Cilic booked a quarter-final with Andy Murray after beating Thomasz Bellucci 7-6 (7/3), 0-6, 6-3.

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