Time traveller Rafael Nadal looks sharper than his beloved Real Madrid

A day after La Duodecima was sealed by his beloved Real Madrid, Rafael Nadal continues to bound boyishly towards La Decima. Like Los Blancos in football, this almost feels like a date with sporting destiny.

Like Ronaldo and his band of pristine Champions League winners in Cardiff on Saturday night, Rafa is going down better in Paris than some game, good company and a bottle of your best Chateau Lafite Rothschild. Or any other fine red that comes alive as much as Nadal does on the red stuff. This is rapidly turning into another vintage sort of year for a figure who is more at one with clay than Pablo Picasso.

Resistance has been futile judging by the manner in which he gutted his fellow Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut 6-1 6-2 6-2 in the last 16 on Suzanne Lenglen. You are certainly not going to outrun him. Nor outthink him. Nor outlast him. Sporting a Sunday best that is a heady brew of natural endurance, mental toughness, baseline belligerence and the inimitable topspin forehand that is like a break of serve before a match begins on clay, Nadal is as much the real deal as Madrid.

"Nadal is at his best. He plays every point with great intensity and yields nothing," commented the 17th seed Bautista Agut. "You try to take a few risks, and then of course you make more mistakes than usual."

So far it is Nadal against the rest. And Nadal is winning. Anybody who questions why he is the outstanding favourite to win this frantic, unrelenting and undulating version of tennis should study the way he has equalled Roger Federer's record of 11 quarter-final appearances at the event. It seems certain another Spanish dirtballer in the form of the unheralded Pablo Carreno Busta will be offed on Tuesday.

Nadal has looked under about as much strain as a tourist trying to find a spot to sunbathe in his native Mallorca. Just as the sun rises and sets in the morning on the Spanish holiday island, so Nadal rises and wins sets at Roland Garros.

We have been here before you might conclude. Yet we have. And we haven't. Nadal won the last of his nine French Opens in 2014 yet has never appeared to be more dominant than making the last eight this year. The surface has almost resembled a red carpet allowing the red-blooded 'King of Clay' to survey all before him in riding roughshod over his subjects.

"I have the impression I'm doing things well. I'm on the right tracks," he said. The King is also the master of understatement then.

Nadal has dropped only 20 games in bestriding this tournament with Benoit Paire, Robin Haase, Nikoloz Basilashvili and the unfortunate Augt disappearing quicker than the foie gras circulating the season's second Grand Slam.

His previous best was letting a pesky 19 games elude him in reaching this stage in 2012. But that was five years ago when he just turned 26. Winning a seventh French Open against Djokovic in the final in 2012 was expected. This is not.

Not when he had been dismantled by Djokovic in the last eight two years ago looking a shadow of his former self. Not when he had been forced to withdraw on the cusp of last year's third round nursing a wrist injury that forced his hand, and his season to conclude after defeat to Lucas Pouille in the US Open last 16 in August.

Many wondered if Nadal was finished, set against the demands of dodgy knees, back pain and the unreliable wrist. Well, the answer is as fascinating as the Caves of Drach.

Having turned 31 on Saturday, there is no physical evidence of Nadal looking or feeling the strain amid the inexorable march of age. His demise has been reversed. He is Benjamin Button brandishing a Babolat.

Nadal remains on course to emulate the years of 2008 and 2010 when he won the French Open without dropping a set. Bjorn Borg did likewise in 1978 and 1980 and Ilie Nastase in 1973, but not at this juncture of their respective careers. Not over the sporting landmark hill of 30.

It is barely conceivable to think that Nadal, with nine French Opens adorning his trophy room, is getting better with age on the sport's toughest surface. Yet just as 35-year-old Federer adopted a form of table tennis to win the Australian Open, Indian Wells Masters and Miami Open on hard courts at the outset of this wonderfully odd and odder season, so has Nadal gone back in time to pick up the cudgel on clay in claiming titles in Monaco, Madrid and Barcelona.

In 12 years at Roland Garros, he has lost only two of 76 matches: to Robin Soderling in 2009 and then Djokovic, a player who has called on the part-time coaching wisdom of Andre Agassi to help him defend the French Open. Djokovic was highly impressive in his straight sets success against Albert Ramos-Vinolas, but Zinedine Zidane might not even be enough to halt the Nadal rise.

It is staggering to believe it is a decade ago that Nadal's 81-match winning run was ended on clay by Federer at the Hamburg Masters.

"I will go to the French Open just as confident," said the 20-year-old Nadal then. He could have said the same after suffering defeat to Dominic Thiem in the quarter-finals in Rome a fortnight ago. He is world number one this year.

Nadal has not thrown down the gauntlet to his opponents. He is the gauntlet, a one-man wrecking ball who continues to conjure up weird and wonderful angles to rule this event with an iron fist.

Clay is a sport made for hardened men. There is no easy way to win on the dirt, but Nadal is remarkably making it look more comfortable than lifting the French Open at his first attempt aged 19 in 2005.

Nadal's best days at this tournament are behind him. Yet astonishingly, greater times could lie ahead.