Spain's Nadal bounced out of Shanghai Masters

Shanghai, Agency
Rafael Nadal lost Thursday in the third round of the Shanghai Rolex Masters 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 to Austria's Jurgen Melzer, who used a punishing baseline game to score his first victory over the Spaniard in four meetings.

Nadal had won his three previous matches against the 12th-ranked Melzer in straight sets, including a victory in the semifinals of this year's French Open, but the fast conditions at the Qi Zhong Stadium favored his flatter-hitting opponent.

Using a lethal combination of penetrating ground strokes and deft touch at the net, Melzer handed the world No. 1 his second defeat since his historic victory at the U.S. Open in mid-September, when he became just the seventh men's player in history to complete the career Grand Slam - titles at all of four of tennis' most prestigious tournaments.

Despite losing the second set, Melzer used his relentless attacking style to secure a break midway through the third set.

Nadal was able to stave off three match points when serving down 2-5, benefiting on one of those points from an out call that the instant replay system showed to be erroneous.

But Melzer calmly served out the match in the very next game.

"I think the key was to put a lot of pressure on him," Melzer told the official site of the ATP Tour. "You cannot let him play his game. You'll always be second. That play with his forehand, he's just too good."

"So I tried to take the ball early. I was serving really well, especially on big moments. I executed my game plan, which was putting a lot of pressure, especially on his forehand."

Nadal, who was playing his third tournament in three weeks, said fatigue played a role in the loss.

"I felt slow on court," the Spaniard said. "I had more mistakes than usual. I played shorter than usual (and was) a little bit more tired than usual, just physically and mentally. I just (want to) congratulate him. It's true, he played very aggressive, but it wasn't very difficult to play that aggressive against me today."

Next up for Melzer in Friday's quarterfinals will be Argentina's Juan Monaco, a 6-0, 6-2 winner over Germany's Mischa Zverev.

In other action Thursday involving Spanish players, David Ferrer fell to powerful Swede Robin Soderling 7-5, 6-4 and Guillermo Garcia Lopez - the other player to defeat Nadal since the U.S. Open - continued his strong run of form by defeating Czech Tomas Berdych 7-6 (7-4), 6-3.

The loss to Melzer was one of the few disappointments this year for Nadal, who captured his fifth French Open in June and his second Wimbledon before winning the U.S. Open later in the summer for his ninth Grand Slam title overall. His other Grand Slam title came in 2009 at the Australian Open.

Nadal has also won four other events this year, including last week's Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships, a tournament played in Tokyo.

The Spaniard lost in last year's Shanghai final to Russia's Nikolay Davydenko.

The Shanghai Rolex Masters is one of nine ATP World Tour Masters 1000 events, which rank just below the four Grand Slam tournaments and the season-ending Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in terms of ranking points and prestige.