Milos Raonic's Shanghai run ends with a straight-sets loss to Rafael Nadal

On the plus side, there were few visible signs of the hip problem that hampered Milos Raonic in his previous round.

But there was enough Rafael Nadal to knock the 24-year-old Canadian out of the ATP Tour event in Shanghai, China, a 6-3, 7-6 (4) victory that put the No. 8 seed into the quarter-finals against Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland.

Raonic had several strips of athletic tape on his lower back, but generally played at a high level. Certainly he was far less vocal and irritable than he was in the previous match against Roberto Bautista-Agut, one he pulled out in a third-set tiebreaker.

His only true misstep came in the second game of the match, when Nadal broke his serve and ran out the set from there. Raonic was right with the Spaniard in the second set, but a mini-break earned by Nadal in the first point of the tiebreak was enough.

Nadal's competitive demeanour was more in line with his best years; as he has struggled in the last 12-18 months with confidence, there have been moments when the fist-pumping and emotions seemed out of alignment with the match situations, and the opponents he was facing.

Against Raonic, he was notably calm. He also pulled off some forehand down-the-line passing shots that harkened back to his dominant days even if that forehand was, at times, under pressure, still landing too short in the court.

The Canadian earned 90 ATP Tour ranking points for his third-round showing, not enough to gain any ground in the race to qualify for the ATP Tour finals in London; he still stands 13th. His next scheduled tournament is next week in Vienna, Austria.

(UPDATE: Raonic withdrew from Vienna on Friday; his next scheduled tournament after that would be in Basel, Switzerland the following week)

Elsewhere in Shanghai, Raonic's Davis Cup teammate Daniel Nestor and French partner Édouard Roger-Vasselin have reached the doubles quarter-finals.

They were to meet No. 1 seeds Bob and Mike Bryan, but the Bryans were upset by the Colombian team of Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah Thursday.

The Colombians defeated Nestor and Vasek Pospisil last fall in Halifax during a Davis Cup tie, but the Canadian veteran has had good success against them overall. Currently, Cabal and Farah are one spot ahead of Nestor and Roger-Vasselin in the race to qualify for the ATP Tour Finals in doubles (the top eight teams make it). Despite this only being their sixth tournament as a tandem, Nestor and Roger-Vasselin could leapfrog four other teams and move into ninth spot in the race if they can win in Shanghai.