Nadal, who is seen as the greatest clay court player of all time, was in imperious form from the start and won the first 12 points of the match to give himself a 3-0 lead in the first set, which he eventually closed out 6-3.

The Spaniard then recorded another convincing win in the second set, beating Gasquet 6-3, before ensuring he ran out a 3-0 winner thanks to a 6-2 win in the third set.

Today's result means Nadal has now beaten Gasquet 16 times in a row.

Elsewhere in the men's competition, Italy's Fabio Fognini beat Great Britain's Kyle Edmund in a five-set thriller.

Fognini, the 2015 Australian Open champion had taken the first set 6-3 but Briton Edmund recovered well to give himself a 2-1 lead with 6-4 and 6-3 wins in the second and third sets respectively.

The Italian, however, recovered well to take the final two sets by 6-4 scorelines to book his spot in the last 16.

Over in the women's competition, tournament favourite Simona Halep of Romania defeated unseeded German Andrea Petkovic to secure her spot in the last 16.

Petkovic had pushed her highly fancied opponent close in the first set with the Romanian eventually only winning it by a 7-5 scoreline, but the German then suffered an injury in the second set which required the trainer to treat it several times.

She was unable to recover from this, meaning Halep dominated and won the second and decisive set by a convincing 6-0 scoreline.

There was, however, one upset in the women's event today as 25th seed Anett Kontaveit of Estonia beat two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic 7-6 (8-6), 7-6 (7-4).

The event continues tomorrow.