Robin Soderling smothered Rafael Nadal in the fourth round at the French Open and sent him home early for the first time in four years.<\/b> <\/p>\n
Pete Sampras<\/b> might have swallowed just a little bit after he woke up this morning and checked the scores at Roland Garros. The King is dead. After four straight French Open titles, Rafael Nadal<\/b> finally played a bad game and opened the door for Roger Federer<\/b> to equal Sampras\u2019 record of 14 slams. Four years and 31 straight victories on the beautiful terre battue and Rafa finally played a subpar game on a day when his opponent played out of his mind.<\/p>\n
Not only would Roger match Sampras\u2019 record if he cashed in Rafa\u2019s gift by winning the title in Paris, but he\u2019d pass Sampras in most people\u2019s minds because he\u2019d have a career slam while Sampras only ever managed to reach one semifinal in Paris. My mind immediately went into nerd mode.<\/p>\n
What if Roger won this thing and then got another U.S. Open to get his 15th slam? No one is going to edge Rod Laver<\/b> out of the conversation with his two calendar slams \u2013 unless Rafa got one before he was done and became 1a next to Laver because only one of Laver\u2019s calendar slams was in the Open Era. Would we hold Roger\u2019s abysmal losing record to Rafa against him and give him a \u201cgreatest of all time” with an asterisk? Ah well, I\u2019m getting ahead of myself here.<\/p>\n
Six times in his post match media session, Rafa said he\u2019d left he ball short and that\u2019s why he\u2019d lost his first match ever at Roland Garros by going down to Robin Soderling<\/b>, 6\u20112, 6\u20117(2), 6\u20114, 7\u20116(2). Rafa didn\u2019t rise to the occasion and he didn\u2019t fight tooth and nail in his usual rock steady style. And the ball wasn\u2019t just short, a lot of the time it didn\u2019t even reach the net.<\/p>\n
It probably looks like Soderling is one of the least likely candidates to end such a stupendous winning streak, particularly as he lost to Rafa 6-1, 6-0, at the Rome event in April. And if you watch Soderling running from corner to corner on clay, his strides are so long you wonder his feet don\u2019t go out from under him with regularity.<\/p>\n
But Soderling has those hard flat shots that gave Tomas Berdych<\/b> and James Blake<\/b> three match winning streaks over Rafa in 2005 and 2006. Then there\u2019s David Nalbandian<\/b> who still has a career winning record over Rafa. Nalbandian is a master at redirecting the ball, particularly off his backhand side that is not bothered a wit by Rafa\u2019s high bouncing left forehand.<\/p>\n
And then there was the semifinal in Madrid a few weeks ago when Novak Djokovic<\/b> won point after point by hitting enough flat shots to Rafa\u2019s backhand to open up the court for sharp angled winner to the forehand side. Djokovic had three match points and played the match of his life, but Rafa recovered from a sore knee in time to rise to the occasion and come up with just enough fantastic points to win the match.<\/p>\n
The next day Rafa lost the Madrid title to Federer and so the stage was set for his loss today. Soderling, the hard hitting player who isn\u2019t as good as Djokovic or Nalbandian at redirecting the ball but is a tall dude who isn\u2019t bothered by the high bouncer to his backhand either, the sore knee in Madrid, the whispers that Rafa didn\u2019t quite look himself in his early rounds in Paris, and today, an agitated, stressed out Rafa throwing his arms up in despair as another ball landed in the net or over the baseline.<\/p>\n
And that was the most surprising part of the loss. Calmness. He\u2019s the best fighter out there because he remains calm enough to maintain his focus. When someone asked him what happened to his calm in the post match media session, this was his response:<\/p>\n
Well, I never was calm; that’s the truth. Instead of losing my calm, the match started off very badly for me. I mean, the second set, I should have won it 6\u20114. \u2026Then not being calm enough to face the important points, …I had to fight. But sometimes it’s not enough fighting. You have to play a good level of tennis.<\/p>\n
And sometimes people think I win because I’m physically fit but, no. When I win, it’s because I play well, and that wasn’t the case today. I must say that at key moments I couldn’t take the opportunity because I was losing my calm, and I didn’t play well.<\/i><\/p>\n
Here\u2019s where we have to give Soderling a tremendous amount of credit because Soderling never allowed Rafa to reach a good level of tennis \u2013 he never allowed him to find his calm. After winning just one game off Rafa in Madrid, Soderling came into this match swinging for the lines and never stopped. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn\u2019t but it\u2019s the only way Soderling was going to beat him and he persisted no matter what.<\/p>\n
The first thing that comes to mind for me is Roger Federer. We\u2019ve been screaming at him to attack Rafa and, instead, he tries one thing and if it doesn\u2019t work he goes on to another. He\u2019s not the same style of player as Soderling but he also isn\u2019t as brave. He has more to lose. If Soderling loses to Rafa, well, no big deal. We expect that. If Roger loses to him, that\u2019s one more reason why he won\u2019t be the greatest.<\/p>\n
But now that Roger beat Rafa at Madrid by attacking on the fast court and especially after watching Djokovic almost beat Rafa and Soderling finally finish him off with relentlessly aggressive tennis, I\u2019m gonna tear my hair out if Roger does anything less should he meet Rafa again here next year.<\/p>\n
The main entertainment during today\u2019s match was trying to figure out when Soderling would fold. When would he start spraying his shots or hitting double faults? When would he start losing focus? When would he start acting surly and grumpy? He came close a few times.<\/p>\n
After winning the first set easily then losing the second set in a tiebreak, Soderling looked liked he was going to lose his serve early in the third set but righted himself and broke Rafa to go up 4-3. Soderling served out to win the set but then lost his serve early in the fourth set to go down 2-0. Here we go, I thought, but then he broke back immediately at love. And as the fourth set progressed, Soderling found himself in the zone. His serve kept improving and his shots kept finding the lines.<\/p>\n
On clay against Nadal, that\u2019s only enough to get you to the tiebreaker, but if Soderling could serve his way through that, he had the win. He found himself up 6-1 in the tiebreak and it was his groundstrokes as much as his serve. A backhand dipper at the net that Rafa couldn\u2019t handle, and Soderling had his win.<\/p>\n
It looks like Roger\u2019s main competition will come from Juan Martin Del Potro<\/b> in his half of the draw and should he get past Del Potro, Nikolay Davydenko<\/b> is threatening to get to the final because Andy Murray<\/b> isn\u2019t yet that good on clay. I don\u2019t know about you, but now that Rafa can\u2019t win the calendar slam – and I was looking for that because I want the greatest of all time list to look as funky and confused as possible, mainly because the longer you follow sports, the more you realize how rare sustained greatness is \u2013 my heart is all over Roger\u2019s path to the final and his first French Open title. C\u2019mon, man, don\u2019t disappoint me now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Robin Soderling smothered Rafael Nadal in the fourth round at the French Open and sent him home early for the first time in four years. Pete Sampras might have swallowed just a little bit after he woke up this morning and checked the scores at Roland Garros. The King is dead. After four straight French […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}