It's a busy Rogers Cup so far for Rafael Nadal, who keeps winning in both singles and doubles

MONTREAL – Rafael Nadal opened the non-recreational part of his summer hard-court season Wednesday at the Rogers Cup, with a 7-6 (4), 6-3 victory over the tricky Sergiy Stakhovsky that was fairly straightforward, with the exception of a game in each set, when he served for the set, and things got a little complicated.

Here's what it looked like; as inconsistent as the Spaniard has often looked during his lengthy, numerous practice sessions, he was pretty consistent overall in victory despite some very windy conditions.

Nadal had a lot to say afterwards; the main thrust as he analyzes his season thus far is that even though it's been the worst year in many years, he's pleased that the overall graph line is trending upwards, despite some bad losses. In other words, he is slowly finding his level and because he's healthy, he can put in the crazy amount of Nadal-hours he feels he needs to continue along that path.

But Nadal has been a busy man. And the rest of it is the recreational part.

He has already been out on intimate, 400-seat Court 9 twice for doubles with countryman Fernando Verdasco. And he has won both of those as well.

The first victory came Monday against Tomas Berdych and Jack Sock, both singles players but clearly not in sync at first as a team even though the score was close in the end. The second came Wednesday, after Nadal's singles victory, against Australian Open finalists Nicholas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert, 7-6 (8), 6-7 (2), [10-4].

The first few days of the tournament on Court 9 have been the place to be; Wednesday, the crowd was treated to a dramatic win by the American Sock over No. 14 seed Grigor Dimitrov, then an upset win by Aussie Bernard Tomic over US Open champion Marin Cilic, followed by Novak Djokovic in doubles, and then Nadal.

It's a different world out there. From the Hawkeye Challenge system to ... well, trying to examine marks to at least determine whether the linesman made a mistake, with no recourse.

Nadal and Verdasco are now in the quarter-finals, where they may face the best doubles team in the world, Bob and Mike Bryan of the U.S.  In singles, Nadal has a very good draw, as he meets qualifier Mikhail Youzhny, a veteran Russian who is in the final stages of his career and has done well to even get this far, Thursday night.

Nadal is 12-4 in his career against Youzhny; the last time he lost to him was 2008.