Nadal destroys Kukushkin

Nadal, who has won the last seven years at Monte Carlo, was close to unstoppable, dropping just two games to win in exactly one hour.

The Spaniard was forced to play his third round match late in the evening under floodlights after a rain-interrupted day in Monte Carlo, and the clouds were gathering again towards the end of the match, but some destructive play took the weather out of the equation.

Next up for the champion is a quarter-final against Stanislas Wawrinka, who overcame Nicolas Almagro 6-3 6-3. The pair took to the court shortly after Nadal finished, but the Swiss number two needed just 80 minutes to dump the eighth seed out of the tournament.

Earlier in the day as the weather turned grey and cooled down, France's Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the fourth seed, shrugged off two rain delays to beat Spaniard Fernando Verdasco 7-6 6-2.

He will meet compatriot Gilles Simon, the ninth seed, who moved past Serbia's Janko Tipsarevic 6-0 4-6 6-1.