We propose an enhanced controller to improve the robustness of Time Delay Control (TDC) for a robot manipulator in the presence of nonlinear friction, such as Coulomb friction. The problem of TDC is first analyzed with TDC as a trajectory control for a robot manipulator in the presence of nonlinear friction. Gradient estimation is used to solve this problem. The proposed controller is called TDC with Gradient Estimator (TDCGE). Comparing with a prior research to improve the robustness of TDC, named TDCSA, the TDCGE is much simpler to design. Through 1 DOF linear motor experiment, it is verified that the TDCGE is more robust against nonlinear friction than TDC and the TDCGE has a similar robustness to the TDCSA. In addition, it is confirmed that the TDCGE is easily implemented in the multi degree-of-freedom robot manipulator through a 3 DOF spatial robot manipulator experiment.