Rafael Nadal set up a mouthwatering semi-final clash with Andy Murray at the ATP/WTA Miami Masters after coming through a tough battle with French sixth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga on Wednesday.
The Spanish world No.2, chasing his first tournament win of the season, needed almost three hours to defeat Tsonga 6-2 5-7 6-4 in a quarter-final night match.
Nadal, 25, struggled at times on his serve, failing to land a single ace, but he managed to save eight of 10 break point opportunities.
He served for the match at 5-4 in the second set but Tsonga dug deep, winning three straight games to force a decider.
Nadal, who has reached the final in Miami three times, broke the Frenchman in the ninth game of the third to lead 5-4 and survived two break points in the final game to progress to the semi-finals.
Earlier, 2009 champion Murray, chasing his second title of the season after a win in Brisbane, rallied to beat Serb ninth seed Janko Tipsarevic 4-6 6-3 6-4.
The Scottish fourth seed lost his opener at Indian Wells earlier this month and he looked as if he could be headed for another early exit when he lost six games in a row.
“I felt like in the first set I was trying to do too much with the ball and therefore making more mistakes than I needed to or that I normally do,” the 24-year-old said.
In the women’s draw, Victoria Azarenka’s 26-match winning streak was snapped by French seventh seed Marion Bartoli, who beat the world No.1 6-3 6-3 in the quarter-finals.
Azarenka’s season-long win streak earned her four titles, including her first grand slam title at the Australian Open, with which she gained the world No.1 ranking.
She also won in Sydney, Doha and Indian Wells.
It was the longest match winning streak on the WTA Tour since Martina Hingis went 37-0 in 1997.
Defending champion Azarenka may have been feeling the effects of a tough fourth-round match.
Down a set and behind 5-2, she rallied to beat 16th seeded Dominika Cibulkova in three sets, 1-6 7-6 (9-7) 7-5, but she couldn’t engineer a similar comeback against Bartoli.
In the semi-finals Bartoli will play fifth-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland who brought Venus Williams’ comeback event to a halt, downing the American 6-4 6-1 in the quarters.
She needed one hour and 21 minutes to overcome Williams, who was playing her first WTA tournament in more than six months after her abrupt withdrawal from the second round of the US Open, where she revealed she had been diagnosed with the auto-immune disorder Sjogren syndrome.
Williams, 31, is hoping to raise her world ranking high enough to allow her to compete at the London Olympics.
Currently 134th in the world, she is projected to move up to around 90th when the new rankings are released on Monday thanks to reaching the quarter-finals in Miami.
The top 56 in the world as of early June are eligible for direct entry into the Olympic tournament, which will be held at Wimbledon.
