French Open champion Gaston Gaudio reached his third successive semi-final on the men's tour with a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Jiri Novak in the Stuttgart Cup on Friday.

The Argentine second seed, who followed up his victory in Paris by reaching the final in Bastad last week, dominated the match against the Czech to set up a last four meeting with David Ferrer.

"It was tough, I played against Jiri in the French Open (and) I knew it was going to be hard but I managed to win finally," said Gaudio.

In a see-saw contest featuring 10 service breaks, Ferrer saved three match points before edging out fellow Spaniard Rafael Nadal 6-3, 6-7, 7-5.

Ferrer served for the match at 5-4 in the second set but Nadal broke back and then clinched the tiebreak to level at one set all.

In the deciding set, Nadal held three match points in the 10th game. However, Ferrer stormed back to win four games in a row and seal victory after two hours and 26 minutes.

The other semi-final will be contested by Russia's Nikolay Davydenko and Argentine Guillermo Canas.