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Roger Federer reasserted his mastery over Rafael Nadal by winning their fourth round battle in the BNP Paribas Open. The Swiss won over the Spaniard 6-2, 6-3, in a match that lasted an hour and eight minutes.

The early face-off of the two fan favorites was really a total domination of Federer over Nadal. ESPN reported that Nadal was clearly outgunned by Federer. The only times that Nadal was able to dominate Federer was when he served three love games and broke the Swiss's service in the first set. Federer was also able to capitalize on his big serves and had an answer to Nadal's left-handed forehand that used to produce winners over his right-handed backhand.

The sport is just not ready yet to lose the much-storied rivalry of Federer and Nadal. A CNN report describes their rivalry as so important that if one of them retires, there will be a void that will be hard to fill for a while. They are considered as great ambassadors of tennis, a sport that has been rocked by doping scandals and match-fixing.

This is the thirty-sixth match in their thirteen-year rivalry. Nadal leads Federer in their head-to-head matchup 23-13 but the Swiss won the last three matches, the Basel finals in 2015, the Australian Open finals and this fourth round win this year. Federer holds the record for the most Grand Slam titles with 18 while Nadal has just tied Pete Sampras's 14 for a joint second place.

Federer's win adds Nadal to the list of big names who have exited early in this tournament. Andy Murray was booted in the first round while Novak Djokovic was ousted in the fourth.

The BNP Paribas Open is also fondly known as the Indian Wells Masters and is considered as the biggest tournament outside of the four Grand Slam competitions namely the Wimbledon Open, the French Open or Roland Garros, Australian Open and the US Open.