Nadal finally breaks free against Blake

Somewhere around 9:23 p.m. Thursday, in a tennis stadium nearly filled with perhaps 14,000, Rafael Nadal shook a giant weight off his shoulders.

He got rid of an ongoing toothache, blew away a cloud that had been hanging around for some time now.

Nadal, the man who makes Roger Federer’s heart beat slightly faster -- probably the only one -- finally won a match against James Blake, a noted Nadal-killer.

His 7-5, 3-6, 6-3 victory, in a quarterfinal of the Pacific Life Open, ended with a 120 mph ace. That was followed immediately by a collapse to his knees and a ball smash into the second deck. If this was just another win, Nadal had a funny way of showing it.

Blake is No. 9 in the world, Nadal No. 2, but in this head-to-head series, the record was 3-0 in favor of the guy you wouldn’t expect.

Blake has beaten Nadal at the U.S. Open in 2005, at Indian Wells in a semifinal in ’06 and at the Tennis Masters Cup at the end of ’06. Three big stages, three big defeats for the Spaniard who has won the last three French Opens.

By the time they reached the third set, this match was clearly a matter of who would blink first. There was never any question what kind of match it would be. It was one of those that has become a staple on the men’s tour: hit it hard versus hit it harder. Which was which changed with every point.

“Other than the result,” Blake said afterward, “this was a lot of fun.”

Then he added, “There were lots of back and forth. I was not playing a guy who is one dimensional. Just so much back and forth. I said before that it would come down to just a few points, and that’s what it did at the end.”

There was no choking going on in this one. The key moment seemed to take place with Blake serving at 3-4 in the third and 30-all. On a 92-mph second serve, Nadal stepped around and went for the home run, which he got with a rocket into Blake’s deep forehand corner.

Blake saved that break point, but faced a second one moments later, and Nadal finally finished it with a huge forehand return of serve that Blake hit out. From 30-all in that game, Nadal’s only strategy was to hit it as hard as he could, to the deepest corner he could find, and let the chips fall.

After that, serving out the match looked easy.

“It is very nice [to beat Blake],” Nadal said. “He is a very aggressive player. Very happy to beat a big player like that. There are some moments in a match when you have to do what you have to do. I said if I win this match, I win with my forehand. And I did.”

The victory kept alive Nadal’s hopes of repeating as champion here. He beat Serbia’s Novak Djokovic in last year’s final and gets him again this year, in the semifinals.

Djokovic, this year’s Australian Open champion and one spot below Nadal in the rankings, struggled through a first set against Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland, then got control and won, 7-6 (5), 6-2.

Asked about facing Nadal, against whom he was 2-5 last year and is 2-6 overall, Djokovic said, “He’s a big fighter. He will never give you a free point.”

The other semifinal will be determined today, with Federer facing German Tommy Haas and Argentine David Nalbandian facing Mardy Fish, an unseeded quarterfinalist.

The women’s semifinals were also set Thursday. Top-seeded Ana Ivanovic handled Russian Vera Zvonareva, 6-1, 6-4, and will play fellow Serbian Jelena Jankovic.

Jankovic had a somewhat easy day, taking the first set from Lindsay Davenport, 6-2, and then getting the match when Davenport retired because of a back injury.

Davenport said she had injured her back about a week ago, but had trainers working on it all the time and felt fine -- until she tried to get out of bed Thursday morning.

“After two games, it was pretty sore out there,” she said.

In the other semifinal, determined Wednesday, Russian Maria Sharapova, Australian Open champion and winner here in 2006, will take on another Russian, Svetlana Kuznetsova, a finalist here last year.

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bill.dwyre@latimes.com