Tennis: Safin Off the Menu As Feast is Prepared

Today we will discover whether the match that everybody has been salivating over since the French Open draw was made 11 days ago will take place on Friday: Roger Federer, the world No1, against Rafael Nadal, the Spanish teenager who has won his last 21 matches on clay. It is a Michelin three-star meal accompanied by a bottle of Burgundy's finest. But alongside the anticipation is fear that the table might be whipped away at the last minute.

Both will be trying not to look at the other side of the draw, which was rent asunder yesterday with Marat Safin, the No3 seed, losing in five sets to Tommy Robredo and the eighth seed and last year's beaten finalist Guillermo Coria of Argentina also being beaten.

Safin, attempting to become the first player to win the first two grand slam titles of the year since Jim Courier in 1992, always plays his tennis on a knife edge, and yesterday evening he found Robredo sharpening the blade.

The huge Russian, who beat Federer on the way to his Australian Open title this year, seemed to have tipped the balance his way when he won the fourth set but it was Robredo who held firm when the pressure was on to reach his second quarter-final in three years, 7-5, 1-6, 6-1, 4-6, 8-6.

It remains to be seen whether there will be any such surprises in the other half of the draw. Surely, or so the argument goes, Federer cannot fail against Romania's Victor Hanescu, or Nadal suddenly lose his teenage brio against his fellow Spaniard David Ferrer. Both scenarios seem unlikely but the red clay of Roland Garros does not take kindly to certainties and smears itself not only on shoes and socks but on dreams too.

Yesterday Nadal woke up with injustice and not Federer on his mind. On Sunday, as the rain was falling, his opponent Sébastien Grosjean of France indulged in a small episode of gamesmanship that incensed the Spanish camp, and temporarily threw Nadal off his orbit.

Grosjean, at the end of a rally which cost him his opening service game at the beginning of the second set, claimed an earlier shot had been out and demanded that the umpire, Damien Steiner of Argentina, check the mark. When he refused, as was his right, Grosjean refused to play on and the crowd on the Philippe Chatrier court went wild. On the day that many of them had voted "non" on Europe they were having none of this either and, had a guillotine been handy, Señor Steiner might, like them, have lost his head.

Although the status quo was eventually upheld, the Spaniard was affected sufficiently to lose the second set, although by the time the rain forced everybody home to cool off he was 3-0 up in the third. On his return yesterday morning Nadal made short work of Grosjean, winning 6-4, 3-6, 6-0, 6-3, although afterwards the ill-feeling lingered.

"The crowd did not behave like they should behave. I think the umpire was right but we should have gone to the locker room until the crowd were quiet," said Nadal. "I have never experienced anything like that and it did make me lose my concentration and the control of the match. I tried to concentrate but it's not easy when you miss your serve and everybody starts cheering. Grosjean exploited the situation."

As a result of the Frenchman's behaviour the players are no longer on speaking terms. "I'm not going to speak to him about anything," said the Spanish youngster. Parents with teenage sons may recognise such a stand-off.

Argentina began the day with five players in the men's singles draw and ended it with two, although they are certain of one semi-finalist with Guillermo Canas playing Mariano Puerta tomorrow. However, both last year's finalists went out, the in-form Coria and the reigning champion Gaston Gaudio.

Gaudio led 4-0 in the fifth set against Ferrer when suddenly, having come back from two sets to one down, his nerve failed him. Last year he won the final from two sets behind, but this time it was he that surrendered a lead. "I hadn't felt I had been playing well since I started the tournament, so I could see this defeat coming," he said. "I didn't think I was going to win the title again."

Coria won the first set against Nikolay Davydenko, who beat Tim Henman at this year's Australian Open, but thereafter the Russian claimed the high ground to win 2-6, 6-3, 7-6, 6-2, and will now play Robredo.

One of yesterday's broadest smiles belonged to Canas, who was able to sit back and rest his legs after Nicolas Kiefer of Germany pulled out of their fourth-round match with back problems. "I felt some pain on Saturday and took some pills. But I didn't sleep and nothing helped," said Kiefer morosely. He had never previously reached the last 16 at Roland Garros.