Has anything like this ever happened before to Nadal?

Since 2006, Nadal has been in every Wimbledon final except 2009, which he skipped because of a knee injury.  And 2009 was huge too.  That was when Robin Soderling upset Nadal the fourth round of the French Open.  But despite that monumental upset, Soderling was ranked 25.  He was no chump.

How about Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the 2008 Australian Open?  That was an upset too, but Nadal had reached the semifinals already.  Tsonga’s ranking?  38.  He was just outside of being seeded.

Nadal hasn’t lost in the 2nd round since 2005 Wimbledon where he lost to Gilles Muller ranked 69, at the time, and back when Nadal’s prowess was primarily on clay.

Lukas Rosol is ranked 100 in the world.  One could confuse him, by name anyway, with Lukazs Kubot or Lukas Lacko, both of whom are ranked above him.  It’s not even like Rosol is some unknown 17 year old, a Ryan Harrison or a Bernard Tomic.

Rosol is only 2 months younger than Nadal.  Rosol decided to just go for huge shots.  Big serves.  Big forehands.

The first set went to a tiebreak, with Rosol having chances to win, but losing 11-9 in the tiebreak.  Normally, this would lead to a huge letdown as Nadal would take over, but quite the opposite occurred.  Rosol immediate broke and rode that break to the second set.  Similar story in the third set.

At this point, Nadal needed to pick up his game.  Apparently, he didn’t like the pace that Rosol was playing, and was trying to slow things down.  Nadal took the fourth set, 6-2.  It seemed Nadal would squeeze out the win, as he did back in 2010 when he had to beat Haase and Petzschner in 5 sets en route to a title.

However, by the time the fifth set was about to start, the organizers felt they were running out of daylight.  They began to close the roof.  While it takes about 20 minutes or so to close the roof, they also get the air-conditioning running so the grass doesn’t get too moist.  Given the lopsided 4th set, one had to believe that this break was better for Rosol, who needed to get settled.

And it did help.  Rosol opened with an early break.  From that point, he just hit as hard as he could on returns, not wanting Rafa to get any rhythm on his own serve game and hoping for another break.  Despite all the potential nerves, Rosol served and hit huge while serving on the match, and got up 40-0.

With this loss, the first guy who should be sighing a breath of relief is Andy Murray who has lost numerous Slams to Nadal.  No one expects Rosol to go much further and that he totally zoned out for one match.  Indeed, the entire bottom half of the draw is looking good.  Indeed, a player like Brian Baker could imagine getting to a quarterfinal.  Heck, even Rosol could go deep with the big win he’s had.

Federer also has to be wishing that the draw had put him in Nadal’s half.

So with the tournament in its fourth day, Nadal has made news again with a stunning power upset by unheralded Lukas Rosol, the lowest ranked player to have upset Nadal in a Slam.