Debate: can Murray win the French Open? | Graphic: Murray's march to the last eight

Three young women, draped in the red and yellow of Spain, huddled together in a darkened corner of Roland Garros and wept uncontrollably. Passers-by stopped and nudged each other but did not bother them. It was as if a nation had been plunged into mourning and that, with Rafael Nadal’s extraordinary defeat yesterday, is exactly how it was. A favoured son indecently exposed. No one expected this.

In Tibro, Sweden (and just about every other Swedish town), in Dunblane, Scotland (and several other places in the British Isles), there was celebration, wild in some cases, considered in others.

Robin Söderling might have been able to pass unnoticed down the streets of his home town once. Never will it be so again, for the crew-cutted, straggly-bearded 24-year-old No 23 seed pulled off the greatest victory of his life on Court Philippe Chatrier, when the titan of clay was truly humbled.

No one remaining in the men’s draw shared in the emotions of the lachrymose trio. Indeed, with Nadal out of the way, the 12 left standing are suddenly supercharged. The ogre has gone. The French Open is truly open. Opportunity knocks.

And, given that he is the second highest-ranked player and has beaten the man above him six of the past seven times, why should it not be Andy Murray’s championship?

OK, we may be getting a long way ahead of ourselves, and one can hear the grinding of teeth from those who will say that Roger Federer has been to the past three finals here, Nikolay Davydenko, of Russia — who blasted Fernando Verdasco from the event yesterday to exacerbate Spain’s despair — is a former semi-finalist, so is Gaël Monfils, and there are many more miles yet on the red-clay treadmill to negotiate.

But Murray’s progress to the quarter-finals for the first time was manifestly his best performance here, defeating Marin Cilic, the No 13 seed from Croatia 7-5, 7-6, 6-1. He barely put a foot wrong.

As days go in grand-slam tournaments, this was right up there among the skin-pinchers. Nadal had not lost in 31 previous matches on these sacred grounds, he was playing someone he had beaten 6-1, 6-0 in Rome a month ago (though I had never attended a less one-sided 6-1, 6-0 match) and when he trailed by two sets to one, not many were prepared to wager against him winning in five. And this is where, though there were nits to be picked in Nadal’s game, all credit is due to the right-handed Swede.

From first to last, Söderling did not take a backward step, he played high-risk, he used his open-stanced, wide-arced forehand to devastating effect and he seized upon the chances to swoop into the net with the prowess of a hawk with its eyes on a vole.

Nadal was unable to find a length demanding enough to unsettle his opponent, the whip in the shots was lacking, the champion was perennially second-best in the exchanges. He made only one telling shot in the decisive fourth-set tie-break. He offered no excuses.

One expected that, mid-match, Söderling might have one of the mental letdowns that have prevented him making the most of his physical strengths before. That he did not once look as if the task was going to be too much for him was a testament and was picked up as the defining element of the match by Thomas Johansson, the 2002 Australian Open champion, who was in Söderling’s support team.

“Robin has such enormous power but so much of the time against Nadal you are having to play shots from high up in the air, that it does not make it easy for him to strike the ball as he would like,” Johansson, who will make a decision in the next two weeks whether to retire from the tour with foot problems, said.

“But, to tell you the truth, I felt he should have won in straight sets, he was absolutely tremendous today. This is going to do the world of good for him and, hopefully for Swedish tennis. It is a long time since we have had something to celebrate.”

Not so for the British game in Paris. Tim Henman reached the semi-finals five years ago. There was a degree of certainty that Murray would equal it one day and that day may be close. Fernando González, of Chile, has never played Murray on clay and so their meeting tomorrow is likely to be every bit as frenetic and dramatic as the third-round match in the US Open in 2006, which Murray won in five tough sets.

González is a slap-happy player, who can run hot and cold and back again in successive points. If his forehand is on song, it is the equal of anyone and better than most; if he is slightly off, no one in the stands is safe. Murray will need to be on guard from first to last, as he was against Cilic yesterday, breaking the Croat’s final three service games to secure safe passage.