By Martyn Herman
LONDON (Reuters) - A cull of the top seeds was completed at Queen's Club on Friday when world number one Rafael Nadal was beaten by fellow Spaniard Feliciano Lopez in the quarter-finals.
"I feel ready to go back home and enjoy a little bit with my family," Nadal, who showed no sign of the leg muscle injury that caused a pre-Wimbledon scare on Thursday, told reporters after his 24-match winning streak came to an end.
"It's going to be a positive thing to enjoy a little bit of Mallorca weather, have dinner with friends and maybe play some golf. It's going to be very positive to help me go to Wimbledon with good motivation."
Wimbledon starts on June 21 and this tournament at the up-market Queen's Club is viewed as a yardstick for challengers in the grasscourt slam but the top six seeds this year have all tumbled early.
Three-times Wimbledon runner-up Andy Roddick and Novak Djokovic went out on Thursday and defending champion Andy Murray followed on Friday, losing to Mardy Fish in a third-round tussle that had been interrupted by bad light the previous evening.
Murray, the third seed, was furious on Thursday when Fish packed away his rackets and walked off at 3-3 in the deciding set, saying it was too dark to continue. The Briton returned to lose 6-4 1-6 7-6.
"It wasn't particularly good, few rallies, lots of mistakes," Murray told reporters after his brief appearance on center court on Friday. "Today was a bit of a shoot-out. I played two or three bad points and lost the match."
Murray, a semi-finalist at Wimbledon last year, had branded the decision to stop on Thursday "ridiculous" and said he had received an apology from tournament supervisor Tom Barnes.
"I wasn't annoyed about the light so much as the fact that I wasn't consulted," Murray said.
BIG SERVERS
Nadal had not dropped a set against eighth seed Lopez in five matches since 2003 and was on a 14-match winning streak on grass dating back to the 2007 Wimbledon final. Despite those statistics Friday's loss was not totally surprising.
He thrashed Brazilian baseliner Daniel Marcos in the second round but then scrambled past Denis Istomin in round three.
The rangy, left-handed Lopez was a far more formidable foe on grass. "When you play against big servers like Mardy Fish, Feliciano, the matches depend on a few points," Nadal said. "Grass is not an easy surface and the first week on grass anything can happen."
Nadal, who won here in 2008 before going on to beat Roger Federer in the Wimbledon final, traded service breaks with Lopez early on but could not make much impression after that as the first set drifted toward a tiebreak which Lopez won 7-5.
Lopez broke at 4-4 in the second set and completed victory, the first by a Spaniard over Nadal since Juan Carlos Ferrero two years ago, when Nadal sliced a backhand into the net.
The 28-year-old Lopez will play Fish in the semi-finals after the American returned to court for a second time on Friday to record a 6-4 6-4 win against Frenchman Michael Llodra.
Two Americans have reached the last four with Sam Querrey joining Fish after a 6-3 7-5 win over Belgium's Xavier Malisse. Querrey will play Rainer Schuettler on Saturday after the German beat 14th seed Dudi Sela of Israel 7-5 6-4.
(Editing by Clare Fallon)
