Nadal, ranked No.5 in the world, hasn’t gotten past Djokovic since the finals of the 2014 French Open.
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The seven-time champion insisted that he is focusing exclusively on his second-round clash with Philipp Kohlschreiber on Wednesday, and not looking forward to a possible quarter-final against Novak Djokovic. Bellucci advanced with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Nicolas Mahut.
Friday’s contest will pit the two best players at this event over the past decade and also the best performers thus far in the 2016 clay-court season.
Nadal won titles last month in Monte Carlo and Barcelona to start his pre-French Open clay campaign in the best possible way.
Britain’s Murray, 28, will meet Tomas Berdych or David Goffin for a place in the last four.
The last time Murray and Goffin met was in the final of the Davis Cup last November, during which the Briton sealed the title with his third win over the Belgian.
A troublesome back injury that forced him out of Madrid last week meant Federer just wasn’t in the game as he sunk to a 7-6 (7/2), 6-4 third round defeat to Austrian 13th seed Dominic Thiem.
Murray would be certain to return to No 2 if he reached the final here, but there are plenty of other scenarios in which he would do so. “And then on the tiebreak I hit one double fault and then he played great”.
Both his and Djokovic’s path to victory have been cleared by the absences of Swiss pair Roger Federer, a four-time finalist, and Stan Wawrinka. “Today was an important victory for me, of course, against a very hard opponent”.
It was Djokovic’s first 6-0 set loss since the Cincinnati final with Federer in 2012 and the ninth time in his career that he lost a set without winning a single game.
Djokovic found a way to turn it around against Bellucci.
Djokovic came back from a bagel to beat Thomaz Bellucci 0-6, 6-3, 6-2, and Nadal likewise came from a set down to outlast Nick Kyrgios 6-7 (3), 6-2, 6-4.
Kyrgios needed treatment during the second set and there was further pain to come as Nadal broke for 2-1 in the third with a curling forehand victor, sending him on his way to victory. “I simply was concentrating on the winners in the later part of the match”.
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“It doesn’t matter how I played”, he said.
