“It’s a Tsonga Tsunami” read the banner waved by a young man with an extravagant red, white and blue hair-piece and, indeed, on a transfixed Rod Laver Arena yesterday, Rafael Nadal was washed away by a storm that answers to the name Jo-Wilfried. The 22-year-old Frenchman produced a quite stunning performance to reach the Australian Open final and, in the process, shred the game of the second-best player in the men’s hierarchy.

We have been used to seeing some of the finest players in the sport dispatched from the year’s first grand-slam tournament with tails between legs and Justine Henin, Serena Williams, Lindsay Davenport, Andy Roddick, Ivan Ljubicic and Andy Murray will not reflect on it with an overriding degree of affection. Murray, remember, lost to Tsonga in the opening round 11 days ago, when he required only to play a steady fourth-set tie-break and the match’s momentum could have been irresistibly his.

Nadal, three times the French Open champion, joined the humbled parade yesterday. From the moment that he sent Murray packing, Tsonga has indeed swept all before him and only Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic stands between him and the completion of the first French male success in this championship since 1928, when the “Mousquetaires” bestrode men’s tennis and Jean Borotra won the title on the famed grass at Kooyong. If Tsonga can reproduce the form that obliterated Nadal 6-2, 6-3, 6-2, nothing is impossible.

“It is like a dream and nothing could stop me today,” the world No 38, born of a Congolese father and French mother whose second cousin is Charles N’Zogbia, the Newcastle United footballer, said. “I am just so happy. It was my tactic to hit every ball and everything was in, so what more can I say? Every day for me is like a dream, I can’t believe it is true.”

It was incredible to behold. It is a cruel but inevitable element of tennis that one spends a goodly amount of time in matches at this rarefied level waiting for the younger, less experienced player to implode, to suffer his moments of doubt, to start shanking shots that had previously met unerringly with the sweet spot.

Tsonga bucked the trend, spectacularly. He did not give Nadal an inch of hope, a degree of comfort, a modicum of belief; it was as mature a performance in the circumstances as one is likely to see.

Nadal has built his reputation on endurance, of muscling the opposition from their stride, of forcing them to play a succession of frantic defensive shots until their arms ache and their minds are scrambled. For him to have been on the receiving end yesterday will have been a savage lesson.

There is going for your shots and going for your shots. Tsonga did not, for a minute, hold anything back, and when he served three aces – one on a successful challenge – and crunched a forehand winner to hold serve to love and take the second set, the Spaniard did not have a chance.

Tsonga came to British notice last summer when, ranked No 148 in the world, he won the LTA Surbiton Trophy, spending his day driving crazily between suburbia and Queen’s Club, West London, and playing five matches in two days in the dual attempt to win one event and qualify for another – the Artois Championships. There, he defeated Lleyton Hewitt, who has won the event four times, and subsequently, given a wild card into Wimbledon, he reached the fourth round, losing to Richard Gasquet.

That result was reversed in the fourth round here, a significant success not only for Tsonga but for Eric Winogradsky, his coach, who had been dropped by Gasquet two years ago after overseeing the French No 1’s rise from glittering junior to established senior.

Now he has an even better product to nurture. From playing in ATP Futures tournaments ten months ago to ending Tim Henman’s grand-slam tournament career at last year’s US Open to the final of a grand-slam event, this is indeed a French fairytale.

The women’s final tomorrow pits Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic and the previous time they met in a grand-slam tournament, in last year’s French Open semi-finals, the Serb crushed the Russian for the loss of three games.

Sharapova eased past a clearly inhibited Jelena Jankovic in straight sets yesterday before Ivanovic, having lost the first eight games to Daniela Hantuchova, of Slovakia, awaited the implosion that many expected from Tsonga. In Hantuchova’s case, it happened and Ivanovic won 0-6, 6-3, 6-4.