This columnist thinks so:

http://www.tennisweek.com/news/fullstory.sps?inewsid=6633578

In terms of Nadal being viewed as invincible on clay I suppose this could be the biggest upset. But in terms of disparity in rankings it isn't. Some that come to mind:

George Bastl's win over Sampras at Wimbledon
Michael Chang's French Open win over Lendl
Kathy Horvath beating Martina in the first round at the French which turned out to be Martina's only loss of the whole year.
Peter Doohan's win over Becker at Wimbledon.

Any others?

Defending champ Steffi Graf losing to Lori McNeil in the first round of the 94 Wimbledon.

Karlovic over Hewitt in the first round of Wimbledon in 2003. Hewitt was #1 and the defending champion; Karlovic was a qualifier ranked #203

Jelena Dokic over Hingis in the first round of Wimbledon in 1999. Hingis was #1, Dokic was #126.

I don't agree with that one. While it was an upset, Lori was a pretty good grass court player and was ranked around #20 at the time. This was before they seeded 32 players.

It will be argued for sure but I consider it the greatest upset ever!! Granted Soderling isn't ranked in the hundreds, but he recently lost to Nadal 1 and 0. To win 3 sets over Nadal on clay at his peak is unbelievable, but plain and simple....Nadal was Soderling's BITCH the other day. If Rafa was defending any further back he'd be hitting from the stands. What has Soderling done on clay before? Nada. You are talking about someone who at one point had an 81 match win streak on clay and someone it seemed was a lock in for his 5th straight French Open title. Nadal never lost in Paris, never had to go to a fifth set. I mean its still stunning. So yeah...I think this could be the greatest upset ever!!!

I stand by it. It was the first time in Grand Slam history that a defending champ lost in the first round.

Tennis Channel had an episode about the 5 Biggest Upsets in Tennis. And a lot of people weighed in on what the criteria is that constitutes "greatest upset". Jeff Tarango had the best answer. He said an upset qualifies as greatest when: no one in the locker room thinks you have any chance at all to win; when your coach openly admits you have no chance to win, and when your own family thinks you have zero chance to win . I doubt Magnus Norman thought Soderling had no chance to win.

The Sampas loss to Bastl at Wimbledon is THE biggest upset in the Open Era. Sampras had always remarked he'd never lose a Best of 5 match on grass to anyone who had a two-handed backhand. And Sampras was just about as accomplished at Wimbledon as Nadal is at The French: Sampras had 2 losses in 9 years at the Big W prior to Bastl, and Nadal now has 1 loss in 5 years. Bastl was nowhere near as accomplished as Soderling. In fact, Bastl was a Lucky Loser, only getting into Wimbledon when someone pulled out of the Main Draw at the last minute. And his First Round win enabling him to meet Sampras was his first ever ATP Main Draw win on grass. Sampras should have beat this guy without breaking a sweat. And the nature of his errors in that match, like Match Point where he hit his forehand into the back wall, was just surreal. There's no comparison. The Sampras loss to Bastl is the most shocking defeat ever.

You could have, as a runner-up, the brutal beat down the then #116-Ranked Dockic gave #1 Hingis in Wimbledon's First Round in 1999 an honorable mention. Straight Set win for Dockic: 6-0, 6-1.

I think we may have to see what tennis has in store for Soderling over the coming months & years before we pass judgment on this one. Nobody doubts that he has a LOT of talent, after all.

As opposed to ... Bastl, who was a lucky loser when he beat Sampras. Sampras's only other losses in a decade at Wimbledon were to Federer, Krajicik, and Ivanisevic. I guess you could argue that anyone with a racquet would have beaten Sampras on that day, but it's not like he was incapable of playing anymore - he did win the US Open a couple of months later! And Bastl - who was a LUCKY LOSER - has yet to make the main draw of a major since then.

I don't agree that Sampras at Wimbledon (in 2002) was the equal of Nadal at RG. He had fallen out of the top 10 by that time, and hadn't won a tournament in two years. He wasn't the favorite at Wimbledon in my mind. Granted, Bastl is a hell of a lot weaker than Soderling, but I still don't think it was as big a shock as Hingis getting flattened by a 16-year-old qualifier.

Horvath beating Martina at the 1983 French. Martina was defending champ, #1, undefeated for the year at that point....and wouldn't lose another match the rest of the year either. And then only 2 matches the following year. I'm still stunned by that result.

This ranks equal to that, because clay was Martina's weakest surface, and Rafa's best.

Okay, but keep in mind - in 1983 Horvath got to the semis of the Italian Open (beating the top seed that year, Ruzici) and the finals of the German Open, beating #2 seed Jaeger and losing to Evert in two tight sets. She was a good clay player and a dangerous floater.

Meanwhile, Martina played ZERO European warm-up tournaments. She played two green clay tourneys in the US (Hilton Head and the Tournament of Champions in Orlando) and that was her only other clay experience in all of 1983. And even though she was defending champ, she had managed to avoid Evert in the 1982 French Open, got upset by Sylvia Hanika in the 1981 French Open, and had skipped the prior 5 French's entirely.

Moreover, *at the time* Martina had a wonderful career going, but remember it was AFTER the loss the Horvath that she went on her run of 6 straight majors. Prior to that she had lost to Evert in Australia and Shriver in New York.

It's not like it wasn't a huge upset. I just don't think it compares to Sampras losing to George Freakin' Bastl or Soderling beating Nadal.

It's a pretty huge upset -- I thought I was still dreaming when I woke up and checked the RG site's point tracker. It's still kinda weird not to see Rafa in the French lineup. Though also kind of refreshing. Maybe it will be good for him to have a break.

Terp the one thing to take into consideration regarding that 0 and 1 Soderling loss in Italy is that Soderling and Nadal fought like dogs for almost all 7 games of the first set. A lot of them went to deuce and featured points where Soderling was the extreme aggressor and Nadal was in the extreme backcourt, especially in comparison to how he's played clay tactically in the last year or two. The score was radically different, but the look of the match wasn't. These two really, really dislike each other, it's pretty much war.

Near the end of that match, Soderling was HUMILIATED. As the bagel approached, he essentially freaked out and started arguing a line call in a panicky voice and pointing to a wrong mark (cheating?) all the while. (There are YouTube clips.) So he must have gone into the French rematch with revenge on his mind to a degree that Nadal foolishly underestimated.

Soderling has the last laugh, and while Rafa will probably get him back, he'll never be able to on that scale. He really is Rafa's career nemesis, because his extended multiple-day match against Nadal in Wimbledon seriously messed up Nadal's campaign for the title in 2007. (I wouldn't be surprised if Soderling considered his loss then a victory in that sense.)

The mind-blowing thing about Soderling's French win is that he beat Nadal with the same plan the better flat hitters used to employ against Nadal on hard courts. To do that on clay is crazy.

As far as Soderling's ranking goes, it certainly counters the idea of a biggest-ever upset. (Until proven otherwise, he's an underachiever in my book -- someone with a huge game and middling commitment who lives to be Antihero and try to spoil the story of champions.) But Nadal's til-then undefeated status at Roland Garros makes it seem biggest-ever. As others are saying, time will reveal it. It's tempting to get hyperbolic right now because we're in such an exciting era. Everyone's always only as good/important as their last match to a degree, and it's easy to forget this era of players might go on similarly for quite a few more years.

I can definitely see the McNeil def. Graf and Horvath def. Martina as top upset contenders. Martina had at least one other loss like that, if not quite as severe, but I'm drawing a blank. I think it's in her bio. With Dokic vs. Hingis, Dokic went on to really prove herself, and wasn't that the year Hingis was psychologically reeling from the debacle of the French final? In comparison, with Nadal, you only really saw glimpses of mental and physical fatigue here and there going in, in the Madrid final and the fact he was getting broken in some of the French matches before Soderling. Not much of a warning.

You might be thinking of the 1988 French Open against the Soviet player (can't remember her name...think it ends in ova or eva) who then got to the final, but was bageled by Steffi. While watching the final it was stunning to think she had beaten Martina. But at that point Martina was #2, and that women matched up well against Martina on clay.

After reading this thread I realize gawd I miss watching tennis! Up until Dec I was back in school full-time & working so my limited free time I had was devoted to the sports I was passionate about. Tennis was probably #3 on the list. At any rate, I have lots of catching up to do...Sorry, back to topic.

Soderling's utter beatdown of Davydenko today makes his win against Nadal slightly less stunning, no? Seriously, would anyone be surprised to see Robin finish in the top 10 this year? The only top 10 Bastl will ever see is "top ten Swiss players with only one vowel in their last name."

Peter Doohan defeating two-time defending champion Boris Becker at Wimbledon, 1987, 2nd round.





Natasha Zvereva

Voicemale, I totally missed your post as I was composing my own. Again, I don't think anyone was shocked that Sampras didn't win Wimbledon that year. It's solely the fact that he lost to THAT GUY. Even journeymen think of Bastl as a journeyman.

Another one to consider: Sprem over Venus.

Interesting that all these are Wimbledon & Roland Garros upsets. What about a great US Open upset - specifically, a hard court Open upset?

Coin over Ivanovic?

Muller over Roddick?

Safin over Sampras?

Kuznetsova over The Field?

Jake:

Good to see you back - you don't post enough! I agree with you that the Sampras loss to Bastl was more about Bastl than Sampras. Still, even though Sampras hadn't won in two years he still played in two US Open Finals in 2000 & 2001 before this match. He should have been able to get through it trouble free.

And you're totally right: given how Soderling steamrolled Davydenko today, the idea of calling his win over Nadal the Greatest Upset Ever is looking less plausible by the day. Soderling is two matches away from winning the whole thing, and with Murray now gone, he looks even more dangerous if he can keep his level where it is right now.

There was another upset, of Lendl at Wimbledon, but I forgot the year & the round. But I do remember it was a Russian named Olhovsky(?), then ranked #200 when Lendl was #1. The guy said after he won the match something that we often forget, but it's true. Olhovsky said, in his Russian English "Don't matter #1 or #200. Everybody hit ball good". It's worth remembering that the Top 1000 players who have a tour ranking are actually guys we'd look at on any practice court at any challenger and be impressed. Which makes accomplishments at the top of the game even more worthy of profound respect from all of us who admire them.

Soderling's win doesn't surprise that much in retrospect. Nadal's played a lot of tennis, has seemed very tired at times, and has ongoing knee(s) issues...Soderling has given Federer and a few others a rough time on court before and is clearly a strong player. It's a huge upset because Nadal's record at the FO is so extraordinary but it was going to happen one day and Soderling is not exactly a junior or a lucky loser. He's a tough guy on court and will likely take on Fed in the final.

Bastl over Sampras was a heck of a shock...

The U.S. Open rarely has a lot of great upsets...it's by far the most predictable of the majors. It's partly because the courts are what they are: no bad bounces, and their speed doesn't vary much with the weather. And unlike Australia, it comes at a point in the season where people have been playing enough tennis to show where their form is. I don't think a top 10 player (like Safin over Sampras) can ever deliver a really historic upset, espcially not when he'd already beaten him once on hardcourt that summer. Looking over the past few years Muller over Roddick stands out. Clement over Agassi was a big surprise, too.

Are we excluding matches where the "upset" is generally thought to be related to injury or illness like Benjamin Becker over Andre Agassi or Anika Kapros over Justine Henin?

I also tend to try to think back to how it seemed at the time. Of course, we know Jelena Dokic was a serious talent now, but at the time we had no way of distinguishing her from an Alexandra Stevenson or a Clarisa Fernandez. She was just as much a nobody as Bastl when she won, and we didn't know then that Martina Hingis would never be quite the same after that French Open loss.

I've always argued that Kuerten in 1997 was one of the most shocking winners of a major ever. Of course, it's no surprise in retrospect, but at the time he was ranked outside the top 50, had never won an ATP title of any kind, and had gone 2-4 on the clay court swing that year with all the losses to players outside the top 50. For him to take downl Muster, Kafelnikov and Bruguera en route to the title was almost inconceivable.