Madrid Open: Masters in Madrid

Serbia’s Novak Djokovic in action against Roberto Bautista of Spain at the Madrid Open pre-quarter-final in Madrid on Thursday. Djokovic won 6-2, 6-1.(Photo: AP)

World number one Novak Djokovic racked up his 30th win of a dominant season with a 6-2, 6-1 destruction of Spain’s Roberto Bautista Agut to reach the Madrid Masters quarter-finals on Thursday.

The resurgent Rafael Nadal and defending champion Andy Murray also remained on course for a semi-final clash as they eased past Sam Querrey and Gilles Simon respectively in straight sets.

Djokovic is playing in Madrid for the first time in three years, but hasn’t taken long to adjust to the different conditions in the altitude of the Spanish capital as he has reached the quarters for the loss of just nine games.

“After a long game at 2-2 in the first set, I managed to break his serve. It was a flawless performance after that, everything worked very well,” said Djokovic, adding “Today the way I played gives me a lot of satisfaction.”

The Serb will continue his quest for a fifth title of the season against Milos Raonic as the big serving Canadian dumped out seventh seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 6-4, 6-4.

Nadal stretched his perfect start to the European clay-court season to 12 matches as he fought back from going down an early break to beat Querrey 6-4, 6-2.

Nadal next meets Portugal’s Joao Sousa who overcame Jack Sock 6-1 6-7 (3/7) 6-2. Murray extended his impressive record over Simon to 14-2 with a 6-4, 6-2 win over 16th seed. The two-time Grand Slam champion will face Tomas Berdych in the last eight after the Czech got the better of David Ferrer 7-6 (10/8) 7-5 .