.jpg)
French Open Defending champion Rafael Nadal is through to his 11th French Open semi-final.
The Spanish ruthlessly turned around his rain-delayed quarter-final against Argentine 11th seed Diego Schwartzman on Wednesday to rap up a 4-6 6-3 6-2 6-2 victory on Thursday.
The Spaniard will face fifth seed Juan Martin del Potro in Friday's semi-final after the Argentine beat third seed Marin Cilic 7-6 (7-5) 5-7 6-3 7-5 in another quarter-final that was moved to Thursday.
Whoever wins that match will face either Austrian seventh seed Dominic Thiem or unseeded Italian Marco Cecchinato in Sunday's final.
Nadal is favoured to win the second Grand Slam of the year, having dominated on the red clay since making his Roland Garros debut in 2005.
But the 16-time major winner looked in danger of being beaten here for only the third time in his career, trailing a set and break on Wednesday to an opponent who had never previously been beyond the last 32.
Schwartzman started the match aggressively, hitting 20 winners as he became the first player since 2015 to take a set off Nadal in Paris.
However, his fearless approach was completely ruined by the rain delays and allowed Nadal to regain control on Thursday.
And Juan Martin del Potro will be playing in his first Roland Garros semi-final since 2009
He burst into tears at the end of his match against Cilic as he celebrated reaching his first French Open semi-final since 2009.
The pair had resumed their quarter-final level at 5-5 in a first-set tie-break.
Del Potro quickly won two points to settle the set before being pegged back as Cilic levelled at the second time of asking in the second set - having made four unforced errors when serving for the set at 5-4.
The Argentine was a break down in the third but turned it around as the errors started to creep in for Cilic, who was bidding to reach the last four for the first time here after falling in the quarter-finals last year.
Del Potro found the breakthrough at 5-5 in a tight fourth set, when Cilic sent a backhand long to give him a break and he went on to serve out the match.
It is an eighth straight win for Del Potro in his meetings with Cilic.
Del Potro has won two of his past three meetings with Nadal. However, he was beaten in the most recent - the US Open semi-final last year - and has lost nine of their 14 matches overall.
