All but eight men out in Paris

The other 126, those male tennis players lacking either of the surnames “Federer” or “Nadal,” finished being whittled to the other six on Monday, and some of them even received attention.

Rafael Nadal insisted.

“Yes, don’t mention the name of Federer again,” Nadal pleaded after besting Lleyton Hewitt, 6-3, 6-1, 7-6 (5).

Beset by two weeks of anticipation of a final between No. 1 Roger Federer and No. 2 Nadal, the twice-defending champion said, “There are eight of us in the quarterfinals, and each of us wants to win the final because each of us wants this. So don’t talk about Federer and myself more than the others. Roger and myself have reached the quarterfinals, fair enough. But all the others have as well.”

The other six and Federer and Nadal prepared to play half of their quarterfinals on Tuesday as soon as the women got done with a docket from which Serena Williams-vs.-Justine Henin shouted loudest.

The other six include, predictably, Novak Djokovic, seeded No. 6, and Nikolai Davydenko, seeded No. 4, plus Tommy Robredo at No. 9, and Guillermo Canas, seeded No. 19, whose presence surprises no one because he beat Federer twice this year.

But they also include 1998 champion Carlos Moya, 30, set to oppose Nadal and treat Roland Garros crowds to an all-Mallorca match between two sons of one gorgeous Spanish island.

And they include Igor Andreev, which is probably the foremost news of the men’s quarterfinals. Andreev would have to be one of the best No. 125-ranked players in history, knee cartilage having stalled his career in 2006, when he missed the last three Grand Slam events.

Rusty at the Australian Open, he lost to Vince Spadea partly because, he said, “You can play one set or so, you can keep concentration, you feel well physically, but when you start playing more and more and more, it’s just so hard to keep the same level, keep the concentration.”

Back to 90% by now, and the conqueror of Andy Roddick in the first round here, Andreev has displayed such a daunting forehand that his fourth-round victim, Marcos Baghdatis, said after losing in four sets, “I have a feeling it’s even more powerful than that of Nadal.... And you never know where he is going to place the ball.”

“My forehand compared to Nadal’s?” Andreev said.

Yes.

“My forehand?”

Yes.

“Well, I appreciate it,” he said, even if he didn’t believe it.

Long deemed rich in potential, Andreev reached the French fourth round in 2004, his furthest prior advancement in any Grand Slam event. He’s this far partly because his parents once dialed up Marat Safin’s mother and wound up sending young Igor along the Safin family’s Russia-to-Valencia (Spain) pipeline.

“And there in Russia, they try to explain, but they don’t see that maybe every person is different,” Andreev said.

Baghdatis came to join three other French Open entries in ruing that phone call, and on Wednesday, Andreev, 23, will play Djokovic, 20, and will hold thoughts of winning the whole thing only “in the very deep fantasies.”

“But I have to go slow,” he said.

That would be about as far as anyone got from the Federer-vs.-Nadal hovercraft.

Said Djokovic, who upgraded his game from a riveting third-round scrape with Frenchman Olivier Patience to a three-set fourth-round win over Fernando Verdasco, “I am now playing against Baghdatis or Andreev” -- it turned out Andreev -- “which is, you know, a good thing for me, you know, not to play against Federer or Nadal.”

Robredo, unnoticed here, prepped Monday for Federer, to see if he could reverse the outcome of their Australian Open quarterfinal, become the first man in 26 Grand Slam matches to defeat Federer, and become the first man since Roddick in the 2006 U.S. Open final to win a set from Federer at a Slam event.

That would coincide with Canas against Davydenko, a match that pits a two-time French quarterfinalist returning from a drug suspension (Canas) against a 2006 quarterfinalist and could take hours. If form holds at the top of the draw, the winner would have to play, well, Federer.