Top seed Nadal crashed out of Shanghai Masters

SHANGHAI: World number one Rafael Nadal was on Thursday dumped out of the 3.24-million-dollar Shanghai Masters in the third round by Austrian 13th seed Jurgen Melzer.

It was only the ninth defeat of the season for the Spaniard, who came into this tournament on the heels of victory in the Japan Open last week.

It was also the first time since the 2009 French Open that he has failed to progress further than the third round: in the 21 tournaments since then, Nadal has reached at least the quarter-final stage.

In spite of never having taken a set off Nadal in their three previous encounters, Melzer stormed the first set here, winning 6-1.

Nadal claimed the second, 6-3, but the Austrian ranked 12th in the world rankings, took the third, decisive set 6-3 to set up a quarter-final against Argentina’s Juan Monaco who beat germany’s Mischa Zverev 6-0, 6-2.

Meanwhile, Switzerland’s Roger Federer, seeded third, eased past Italian Andreas Seppi 6-3, 6-4 to confirm his place in the last-eight.

Andy Murray became the fourth man to qualify for the season’s final event as he defeated Jeremy Chardy 6-3, 6-4 to reach the quarter-finals.

Fellow London qualifier and world number two Novak Djokovic continued his red-hot form, with the two-time Beijing champion hammering Richard Gasquet 6-1, 6-1.

Robin Soderling, Wimbledon finalist Tomas Berdych, David Ferrer and injured Andy Roddick are the next four in the queue for London qualification.

But results over this week and the next four through to the end of the regular ATP season will decide the final line-up for the World Tour Finals.

Elsewhere in the third round on another rainy day, Swedish fifth seed Soderling beat Spaniard David Ferrer 7-5, 6-4 while number 15 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga stopped Florian Mayer 7-5, 6-3 to lineup against Murray.

Spain’s Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, who beat Nadal in the Bangkok semis a fortnight ago, put out Czech seventh seed Tomas Berdych 7-6 (7/4), 6-3.