Rafael Nadal overcame an early wobble to breeze into the quarter-finals of the French Open with a 6-3 6-2 7-6 (7-4) win over Germany’s Maximilian Marterer.
The win extended the 10-time Roland Garros champion's run of consecutive sets won at the tournament to 37. The last man to take a set off 32-year-old was Jack Sock in the fourth round in 2015.
Facing the left-hander for the first time, it took Nadal 11 minutes to get on the board, by which time he had gone 2-0 down having been broken in the opening game of the match, with Marterer showing no early nerves in his first Grand Slam fourth-round appearance.
But it did not take long for Nadal to find his range and after Marterer went long with a forehand on game point on his own serve, the Spaniard sensed his opportunity to force break point, which was secured with a double fault for 2-2.
A crushing winner two games later then sealed his second consecutive break of serve and the first set, and although Marterer continued to run hard and throw everything at Nadal, he could do nothing to prevent his opponent racing through the second set 6-2.
Perhaps freed by a sense of having nothing to lose, Marterer stepped up his game in the third, with a superb delicate backhand across court helping him hold at 2-1.
A drilled forehand volley then set up 0-30 on Nadal's serve and at 15-40, the crowd sensed a chance to extend this match and although he dumped the 22-year-old first break point into the net, Nadal then missed a simple winner with the court at his mercy to give Marterer a 3-1 lead.
His advantage lasted all of two minutes though, as Nadal broke straight back, digging out a sliced backhand to get out of the corner and with that, it seemed Marterer's chance of an unlikely fightback was gone.
But he kept fighting, forcing a tie-break only for Nadal to up the intensity once again and open up a 5-2 lead. Marterer responded with a superb forehand at 5-3 but after an epic rally, a forehand finally fell long to hand Nadal three match points.
The first went begging with a forehand long of his own, but Marterer's fight was finally over when he could not land a backhand, prompting Nadal to race to the net and congratulate the German on a fine effort.
The win means Nadal will now face Argentina's Diego Schwartzman, who earlier staged a thrilling comeback from two sets down to stun sixth seed Kevin Anderson and reach the last eight.
The 11th seed was totally outplayed in the first two sets but twice broke Anderson when the South African was serving for the match en route to a 1-6 2-6 7-5 7-6 6-2 victory.
World No 7 Anderson, who was looking to become the first South African man to make the last eight since Cliff Drysdale 51 years ago, has now lost in the fourth round at Roland Garros on four occasions.