No. 1 Rafael Nadal bounced from French Open by virtual unknown

PARIS —  Now that humanity has located one male out of 3 billion who could beat Rafael Nadal at a French Open, and now that this man has shoveled toward Roger Federer a shimmering opportunity to become the greatest tennis player ever by next Sunday evening, people with a life might just have a question:

Who in the world is Robin Soderling?

He’s 24. He’s Swedish, from Tibro. He’s the son of a lawyer and a housewife. He’s ranked a respectable but quiet No. 25. And the man who might have just tweaked tennis history and freed Federer toward the only Grand Slam trophy he lacks, well, that man never gave a scintilla of an inkling that he could bully Nadal where Nadal had bullied so many others in winning the last four titles and 51 of his previous 52 sets.

Robin Soderling -- Robin Soderling! -- played 21 previous Grand Slam events and reached zero previous fourth rounds. He’d just lost, 6-1, 6-0, to Nadal four weeks ago in Rome. If tennis scholars spoke of him, they spoke mostly of his curious coldness.

Here’s a guy who played a phantasmagoric third-round match with Nadal at Wimbledon in 2007, one that began on June 30, suffered seven interruptions for rain or darkness and ended 92 hours later on July 4. And through all those waits and walks, Soderling never said even hello to Nadal. He did mock him, though, drawing laughs from the crowd by imitating Nadal’s penchant for picking at his pants.

After finally winning, Nadal said, “In the locker room, for the other players, is not the best guy in the locker room.” And Soderling icily declined to carp back other than saying, “He must have been in his complaining mood today.”

Come freaky Sunday at Roland Garros, Soderling said he hadn’t imagined winning but figured he might as well try, “otherwise there’s no meaning going on the court.” And after a 6-2, 6-7 (2), 6-4, 7-6 (2) victory in which he wowed the crowd with crushed forehands that sent Nadal scurrying into corners and reeling into disbelief as balls seared down lines, after Soderling dictated the speed of the match, after he made Nadal look drained, slightly haggard, smaller than himself, Soderling said, “He’s just another player on the tour. Again, he’s the best clay-court player of all times, but he’s just like someone else to me.”

That’s the guy to make Federer dial 1-800-FLOWERS?

“Yeah, he’s different,” said Swedish three-time French Open champion Mats Wilander, who knows Soderling well. “He’s really different. But he’s tough. He’s not afraid of anyone. . . . He doesn’t give a . . . basically.” And, said Wilander, “It takes a serious mind to realize that, ‘Hey, I just lost the second set to Nadal, but I am so much better today, and I’ve just got to stay with him.’ ”

Even as the players’ lounge went into a shocked hush, Wilander said he and others reckoned such a match lurked within Soderling if he could just remove the spottiness from his dangerousness. “It’s monumental,” Wilander said. “It’s been coming for a long time.”

It’s just that nobody on clay earth ever brought up Robin Soderling as the one to stem Nadal’s unbeaten-for-life run, ensure that he would not win a fifth consecutive men’s singles title to break Bjorn Borg’s French Open record, and lend Roland Garros the surreal scene of Nadal departing the premises on the middle Sunday -- the first time he had failed to reach the quarterfinals at a Grand Slam event since the 2007 U.S. Open.

So here came the dethroned, from the locker room in a pink T-shirt, sweetly stopping to hug and thank the support-desk attendants -- “Au revoir, merci” -- looking pained getting a half-hug from Gael Monfils, hauling two huge gym bags upstairs to a waiting black Peugeot, and standing there packing the trunk.

As he plopped in the passenger seat and his coach/uncle, Toni Nadal, slid in back, a smattering of fans noticed and clapped. That left behind a tournament narrative shifted dramatically to Federer, of whom Nadal said, “If one guy deserves it, that’s him.”

And if that one guy wins, he would tie Pete Sampras’ record of 14 Grand Slam titles and trump Sampras by having the full dinner set of cups-and-trophies. So by the time Nadal’s car zoomed out of sight down Rue d’Auteuil, you could imagine Federer, somewhere, maybe exhaling.

“I think they’re all having a beer tonight, even if they play tomorrow,” Wilander said of the remaining field. Who in the world ever could have imagined that if Federer did have that beer, he’d end up raising it to Robin Soderling?

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