BARCELONA, Spain, May 2 (UPI) -- Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer, the top two seeds, Friday reached the semifinals at the Open Sabadell Atlantico tennis tournament in Barcelona, Spain.
The fellow Spaniards are heavy crowd favorites in their home nation.
Nadal, the No. 1 seed and three-time defending champion, was a 6-4, 6-2 winner against Argentina's Juan Ignacio Chela. To get the 101st victory in his last 102 matches on clay courts, Nadal had to bounce back from a 2-4 deficit in the first set.
"If it had gone to 5-2 it would have been very difficult to win the first set," Nadal said. "But getting back to 4-3 gave me a lot of confidence."
Ferrer, the second seed, topped Spain's Tommy Robredo 7-6 (7-4) 6-4.
Also on Friday, Germany's Denis Gremelmayr topped No. 10 seed Nicolas Almagro, a clay-court specialist, 6-2 3-6, 7-6 (9-7); and 14th-seeded Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland beat Spain's Albert Montanes 6-3 6-7 (6-8) 6-4.
