It is always the same with Rafael Nadal. He arrives looking resigned to his fate and promising only to take it day by day.

True to his word, he eases himself through the first few rounds and his followers chew their bottom lips anxiously.

His foot/knees/rib/insert-injury-issue-of-choice must still be troubling him. He is not looking as sharp as he usually does. Can he win it playing like this? Will he be all right?

And then from playing a couple of moderate matches, he suddenly raises his level and begins to look like the Rafael Nadal with the 22 Grand Slam titles. You know the one: that Rafa.

So it was that Nadal, he of the recently repaired foot that we must not mention (he doesn’t want to talk about it so please don’t ask) and the recently celebrated 36th birthday, marched past Botic Van De Zandschulp 6-4, 6-2, 7-6(6) and on into the quarter-finals.

It is a bit like a car with a dodgy transmission. After a couple of goes at getting the thing into first gear – and a bit of a crunching sound – you pump the clutch a couple of times and, hey-presto, the engine engages smoothly and you are off and running.

Nadal was doing his double declutching in the first couple of rounds and managed to find first and second gears against Lorenzo Sonego in the last round. On not-so-manic Monday, he was working through the gearbox against the 26-year-old Dutchman. Rafa looked sharp. Very sharp.

Well, he did until he came to serve for the match. He got a little bit ahead of himself and took his eye off the ball and, all of a sudden, he was in a tie-break. But it was still a very reassuring performance from the No.2 seed before he takes on Taylor Fritz on Wednesday.

“I think I continued in a positive way,” he said, in his unassuming manner. “Until the end when I played a bad game at 5-2, it had been a very positive match against a difficult opponent. Honestly, Botic has been improving unbelievable during the last year.

“In a personal way, after all the things that happened in the last couple of months, to be able to be in the quarter-finals here at Wimbledon after three years without playing here, it’s amazing so I’m very, very happy.”

If Van De Zandschulp is an unknown quantity to you, there is a reason for this. He started last year ranked outside the world’s top 150 and was still dipping in and out of the Challenger circuit as he made his way around the main Tour. The limelight was not his natural habitat.

Then he got to New York and made his way through the qualifying tournament and on to the quarter-finals of the US Open. His ranking started to shoot upwards and here he is ranked No.25 and seeded No.21. Botic Van De Zandschulp is becoming a big name in every sense of the term.

He has a good serve, firepower from the baseline and an ever-increasing reserve of belief and confidence. As a semi-finalist at Queen’s Club a couple of weeks ago, he also knew that he could cut it on a grass court.

What he did not know how to do was cope with Nadal on a grass court. He didn’t know how to cope with him on a clay court at Roland-Garros five weeks ago either – Nadal won their third round match there in straight sets.

Maybe it was the occasion – playing a living legend on Centre Court can tie a chap’s nerves up in knots – or maybe it was the four sets against Richard Gasquet in the previous round; whatever it was, Van De Zandschulp seemed heavy-legged and uncertain of what to do next.

Nadal broke the Dutchman’s serve to take the first set. Van De Zandschulp responded by earning a break point in the opening game of the second. Nadal snatched that straight back and immediately went on to break again. That sparked a serious slump from the No.21 seed and the second set was gone.

A slight dip in his concentration levels led to Nadal dropping serve at the start of the third set but there was no need to panic: he broke straight back. The same thing happened when he went to serve for the match. And he looked absolutely furious with himself for being so lax.

Now there was more work to be done; three games and a tie-break to be precise. No matter. Nadal was not going to make the same mistake twice and, sure enough, once into the tie-break, despite letting three match points slip through his fingers, he got the job done before darkness fell and before the roof needed to be closed.

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