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 The Spaniard, a winner of 14 grand slam titles, suffered a
second-round defeat to Dustin Brown at Wimbledon and was ousted in
the third round at the U.S. Open by Fabio Fognini in a woeful
campaign but has enjoyed a resurgence since arriving in China.
The 29-year-old, seeded eighth in Shanghai, reached the final in
Beijing last week and needed a little more than an hour to breeze
past French Open champion Wawrinka, who toiled for close to three
hours late on Thursday to get past Marin Cilic.
Swiss Wawrinka, who had won his last two meetings against Nadal,
avoided the ignominy of suffering a bagel in the second set by
claiming the sixth game after his opponent had raced to 5-0 on the
back of a nine-game winning run.
Nadal, hoping to grab one of the four remaining ATP World Tour
Finals spots in London, will next meet Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
for a place in Sunday's title decider.
Tsonga got the better of South Africa's Kevin Anderson in a grueling
7-6(6) 5-7 6-4 match between a pair of the circuit's biggest
hitters.
The Frenchman saved three set points during the tie-breaker and
secured an early break in the deciding set to carry him through to
the last four.
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"It was a good match," Tsonga told the ATP website . "It was a good
level, I think. We both played good tennis.
"I was really aggressive. I served really, really well today. I
moved well. I'm just really happy to win today. It come at the good
moment. It's good to play like this."
(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; editing by xx)
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