Nadal cruises past Fognini to reach fifth Miami final
Nadal put in a workmanlike performance in the first men's semifinal on Stadium court, relying on his solid ground strokes against an opponent who committed a whopping 38 unforced errors and appeared to be battling an injury.
Fognini also seemed listless at times on an afternoon when the temperature climbed to 29 C (84 F), the hottest day of the tournament.
The Spaniard earned the first service break of the match in the fourth game thanks to a Fognini double fault and three errors and a second one when the Italian squandered a 40-0 lead in the sixth game.
He then wrapped up the first set in just 25 minutes with an easy service hold.
Fognini put up more of a fight in the second set, staving off five break points in his first two service games to stay even until 5-5.
But he lost his serve a third time in the match when the wind pushed what appeared to be a perfect drop shot wide of the sideline.
The No. 5 seed, who did not face a single break point, lost only nine points overall on serve throughout the hour-and-a-half match and only three of his 15 second-serve points.
The unseeded Fognini, by contrast, paid the price when having to put in a second serve, losing more than two-thirds of those points.
Those numbers were a reflection of the solid baseline play of Nadal, who committed just 12 unforced errors in the contest while striking the ball with sufficient aggressiveness to keep Fognini from getting into an attacking position.
The win was Nadal's third straight victory over the Italian, who came from two sets down to stun the 14-time Grand Slam champion at the 2015 US Open and had won three of their previous six matches.
The two also got into a spat at the 2015 Hamburg event, where Fognini complained that Nadal was taking too much time between serves and yelled out "don't break my balls" at the Spaniard during a changeover.
The 30-year-old Spaniard pulled out that match in two close sets, but he showed in Friday's win that he is in much better form than two years ago.
Next up for Nadal in Sunday's final will be the winner of Friday night's second semifinal between 21-year-old Australian rising star Nick Kyrgios and Swiss 18-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer.
Federer defeated his arch-rival in five sets in the Spaniard's first final in Miami in 2005.
Nadal has lost three other championship matches in Miami since then - to Russia's Nikolay Davydenko in 2008 and to Serbian great Novak Djokovic in 2011 and 2014.