“Sorry for him,” Rafael Nadal said, and he meant it. Whatever your persuasion, be it pro the lad or on the side of those who remain of such narrow-mindedness that they will never support him, you had to feel for Andy Murray yesterday. It is never nice to be beaten up in your own backyard, especially when the man doing the beating-up does not overtly brandish his muscles.

Murray's mauling at the hands of this bull of a Spaniard on Wimbledon's Centre Court was head-spinning in its finality and exceedingly alarming at the same time. Nadal was out there all right, alive and kicking, yet his tennis was of an unconscious nature, a dreamy combination of the brutal and the beautiful. Murray had no answer to it and nor, one thinks, would Roger Federer have had if he had been on the opposite side of the net.

“For sure, it was my best match on grass,” Nadal said, and what a time to produce it, just when the amateur soothsayers who descend upon this sport at this time of year had started to announce the British No1 as a grand-slam champion-in-waiting, without bothering to look at the records, to study Nadal's form and to appreciate that this is a man who has never played the sport better. Be of good cheer, you disaffected Brits, for Murray is getting there, but as things stand today, Nadal is in a different league, an ocean apart.

Of course, it all started to go wrong for Murray when he played his first drop shot of the match (he was to use the tactic only once more) at 15-0 in the eighth game. The previous point had been a potent service winner, so why he chose the next to try to be clever, only he knows. The ball barely reached the net.

Expert View

On Monday we had a vivid revelation of how far Andy Murray has come. Yesterday we had an even more vivid revelation of how far he has to go

Simon Barnes

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Nadal muscles Murray out

Spaniard stages awesome display of power tennis to reach semi-finals and extinguish British hopes for yet another year

• Analysis: Neil Harman on day ten of Wimbledon

• Andy Murray is beaten up in own backyard

• Rafael Nadal spells despair, not disgrace, for Andy Murray

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Nadal was lifted. Two points later he had two opportunities to break and although Murray saved one with a clean forehand winner, he made a hash of things on the second when he sent a routine smash wildly long. It was the beginning of the end.

Nadal won 56 of his 66 service points in the match and, before he double-faulted in the eighth game of the second set, he had not dropped a point on serve in that set. How awesome is that? Murray was chasing, scrambling, giving hope with one shot and having it dashed by the next. He must have felt as if he was running in quicksand. “When you see the amount of spin and speed that Nadal generates, it is the heaviest shot in tennis, especially the forehand,” the Scot said.

One trembles to think how well Nadal might move with perfect freedom in his knees. The stresses and strains of playing the type of game he plays are always there, the emblems being the strips of tape beneath each kneecap. He makes light of the impediment as much as he makes light of the opposition these days. Rainer Schüttler and Arnaud Clément will continue to fight it out today for the honour of facing the Spaniard.

Back in April, Marat Safin was in a reflective mood as he peered from a room on the top floor of the Monte Carlo Country Club across the Mediterranean Sea. Was it the dreamy scene or did he say he felt he had one grand slam left in him? We were discussing his prospects on clay; thoughts of grass were as distant as the horizon. Safin lost in the second round in Monte Carlo, the first round in Rome and, humiliation of all humiliations, he had to qualify for Hamburg. When he succumbed in the second round of the French Open, one was inclined to think that Safin was, indeed, daydreaming.

Then he beat Novak Djokovic, the No3 seed from Serbia, in the second round here and something flickered. We discovered that he had never taken the grass so seriously, that his preparation confounded even his closest allies, that someone who has more natural talent in his little finger than most players can ever possess, really wanted to win Wimbledon. He was not even upsetting himself at how few strawberries they squeeze into a bowl in the players' area. He is a strawberry man is our Safin.

The quarter-finals in 2001, when he was among Goran Ivanisevic's victims en route to the Croat's improbable title, had been a rare demonstration of the Russian's abilities on grass. Most of the time he simply toyed with it. Seven years on, he will play Federer in the semi-finals tomorrow. The previous time they met at such a stage in a grand-slam, Safin triumphed in one of the most memorable matches of this decade, 9-7 in the fifth set in the Australian Open in 2005, going on to win the title.

Federer said that Safin's ranking (No75) is ridiculous. “He can sell me some of his points, then,” the Russian said. “I prefer to have the career of Federer, of course, but I have to deal with the things I have in my life. I'm tired of making comebacks every year. But that's my life, for good or bad. I'm managing to enjoy it.”

Someone said that it was strange that this form should descend upon Safin at Wimbledon of all places. “Yeah, s*** happens,” he replied.