Rafa and the rules
By Stephen Tignor, TENNIS.com

The issue that has never really died away -- and the one that has bothered his opponents the most -- is the amount of time Nadal takes between points. Rafa has gotten better about this over the years, but he still towels off (thoroughly), selects the balls (carefully), pulls back his hair (delicately), bounces the ball (slowly) and stares across the net (thoughtfully) before going into his motion.

“I am feeling great,” Nadal said. “This is a dream for me, a very important moment in the season. I think I am playing better and better every day.”

"I started so slow but Robin was playing very long, powerful shots so it was very difficult to have control of points," Nadal told BBC Sport afterwards.

"After that, I have some problems in the first game of the second set, I saved a break point, and after that the match changed a lot.

"I'm feeling great. To be in the semis here another time is a dream for me. It's a very important moment of the season for me after the clay season. I think I'm playing better and better every day."

"Pascal," pleaded Nadal, first from the baseline and then marching towards the chair, "what are you saying? He [the line judge] says out, I hit the ball. No! No! Call the supervisor! I don't want to play this. What happened? Umpire, come on! No, Pascal. That's unbelievable."

Amid the chaos, Rafael Nadal did what was necessary and subdued Robin Soderling in four sets. A few of us were struck by how few tactically incorrect points he plays on grass. He really "gets" the surface, as his record suggests. After the match, Nadal asserted that, with Federer out, there was no favorite. Not quite.

Nadal is 3-0 in Wimbledon semifinals. He lost the 2006 and 2007 finals to Roger Federer, then beat Federer the next year. But Nadal did not defend his title a year ago. He withdrew from the tournament because of bad knees.

“You know when you play against these kind of players, like Soderling, like Berdych, they have a very good serve and very powerful shots from the baseline,” Nadal told reporters after the match. “It’s very difficult sometimes to stop these player, no?”

"[It] is a dream another time to be in the semi-finals here," he said. "Today was a very important victory for me, I think. Very difficult and very important. I'm very happy how I'm playing, how I arrive to the semi-finals. So I know I am going to have a difficult match against Andy in [the] semi-finals but I am ready to try my best and try for sure to be in this final. It is going be difficult but I am playing well."