BARCELONA (Reuters) - Rafael Nadal gave the crowd at the Barcelona Open a 30-minute glimpse of the future of men's tennis in a remarkable second round clash with Alex Corretja on Wednesday.

Half an hour was all the time it took for the 16-year-old Nadal to reel off six successive games against eighth seed Corretja and bring himself back from 0-3 behind to take the first set 6-3.

Corretja, twice a finalist at the French Open, recovered from what was a whirlwind onslaught from the boy from Mallorca to win the match 3-6 6-2 6-1 in a little over two hours.

He will not easily forget just how well the left-handed Nadal played in that short spell in the first set, however.

The teenager, a nephew of the giant Real Mallorca central-defender Miguel Angel Nadal, pinged a series of forehand winners past him from the back of the clay court.

"To come back from three games down and take the set 6-3 at the age of 16 is incredible," a relieved Corretja said after the game.

"He's powerful and ambitious and that's why he's won so many games."

Corretja must have thought he was in for a comfortable afternoon as he took a 3-0 lead in the opening set in under a quarter of an hour.

PROWLING AROUND

Nadal held service for the first time, though, and that gave his confidence a visible lift, as he started prowling around the court.

He clattered a forehand winner down the line to set up 0-30 in the next and forced two errors from Corretja to get the break back.

The youngster held serve to 15 to level at 3-3 and then roared into the lead as a deft drop-shot put his opponent in trouble.

He improved that to 5-3 thanks to a love service game, with a whipped forehand hit on the run and into the corner bringing gasps from the crowd at 40-0.

Corretja fought tooth and nail to stay alive in the next, saving seven set points, but Nadal held his nerve and took it as a forehand from Costa sailed wide. Nadal could not sustain that dazzling form in the second set as Corretja's greater gamecraft started to tell.

The teenager was broken in the first game and though he recovered to get back to 2-2, he was tiring all the time and Corretja eventually ran out a relatively comfortable winner.

It was nevertheless an astounding first-set performance from Nadal, who was immediately tipped as Spain's next top 10 player following his victory over French Open champion Albert Costa in Monte Carlo last week.

Nadal's first match win in an ATP tour event came a year ago in his native Mallorca and he is already in the top 100 but the player himself is making no predictions about how far he can go.

"I've set myself absolutely no objectives," Nadal said. "I'm in the top 100, which is where I want to be, but other than that I just want to improve each day.

"The important thing is to keep working and to give it everything on every type of surface, not just on clay. There's no great secret to my game."

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