Sports Then and Now

The 2009 BMW Tournament was a breakout event for Robin Soderling.

Tomas Berdych and Robin Soderling are both representative players of the current generation on the ATP Tour.

First, there’s their common height and bulk: the Swede Soderling is listed at 6’4” and 192 pounds on the ATP Tour Web site, while Berdych is listed at 6’5” and 200 pounds.

Secondly, we have their game plans: The 25-year-old Soderling and the 24-year-old Berdych both serve big and hit hard off both wings, and like so many players today the centerpieces of their games are big forehands. The Czech’s is a bit flatter, and the Swede’s requires a bit more backswing, but both men are rightly considered to be among the hardest hitters around.

And by the time the two met in the finals of the BMW Tennis Championship last March, they could be considered to be in a similar phase in their careers. Soderling had broken through in 2003 by reaching his first tour final and the third round of Wimbledon, while Berdych’s big intro was in 2004, when he won his first title and beat Roger Federer at the Olympics.

Despite their early promise, however, their results were stagnant, with Berdych winning just four titles by early ’09 and Soderling only three. Their games had come to be known for one-dimensional power hitting, and both were struggling just to win matches in the early goings of ’09.

Berdych had pushed Federer to five sets at the Australian Open, and then won only one more match. Soderling took a 4-5 record into the event, and had to go through qualifying just to make the main draw of this unique event. Read the rest of this entry →

Just how worried are the “big cheeses” in charge of the first Masters events of 2010? As the men’s Tour heads towards the climax of the early hard court season in North America, the window of preparation is closing fast. Yet there are worrying signs about who will actually start, let alone stay, the course.

With the news this week that Juan Martin Del Potro will be absent for between one and two months due to a recurrence of a wrist injury, it will be touch and go whether the world No. 5 is able to play in either Indian Wells—which begins in four weeks’ time—or in Miami—six weeks hence.

This comes on the heels of Rafael Nadal’s departure from the circuit in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, also for at least a month. He is still targeting Indian Wells for his return. But the uncertainty surrounding the fitness of two of the game’s biggest draws must nevertheless be causing a few sleepless nights for tournament organisers.

Del Potro has been hampered, on and off, by tendinitis in the wrist since he won the U.S. Open last September. It forced him to pull out of the second round of the Shanghai Masters, and flared up again at the warm-up tournament in Kooyong before the Australian Open.

He has now been forced to withdraw from Marseille and Dubai with the same problem, and is also unlikely to join the Argentine Davis Cup team against Sweden next month. Read the rest of this entry →

Could Rafael Nadal and Robin Soderling develop the next great rivalry in tennis?

In 1997 Patrick Rafter won his first major at the US Open, thanks to his agile movement, big-kicking serve and unparalleled net coverage. Though this put him exactly nine majors behind Pete Sampras at that point in their careers, it was easy to begin wondering how the two would match up in future encounters.

Still, the two weren’t truly rivals yet; Sampras was 5-1 against the Australian at that point and would add three more lopsided victories over Rafter to his tally that fall. Plus, with the bulk of his accomplishments and the fact that he had a commanding lead in the race for No. 1, few could seriously claim that the two were players of equal stature.

To become a rival to Sampras, Rafter would have to beat the American, and take something he wanted.

That would come in 1998, when the Australian rallied from down a set to top Sampras at the Cincinnati Masters tourney. Sampras had already won Wimbledon that year, and Rafter’s successes for 1998 were just beginning; still, Sampras hungered for the points that event would bring him. He was pursuing the year-end ranking for the sixth consecutive year – a record – and Marcelo Rios was hot on his heels. Read the rest of this entry →

Soderling's victory over Nadal is considered as the biggest upset in the history of Roland Garros

One of the (dis)advantages of being a software junkie is I like to come up with weird geeky nicknames without any context, and those are not taken particularly well, especially with the fairer sex. This disappointment is usually covered up by the amusing happiness I get by basking in my own glory of false intelligence.

Robin Soderling was assigned a similar nickname when he created the greatest upset in the history of Roland Garros — BSOD — an acronym for “Blue Screen of Death ” which we often get while using a Windows Operating System. Soderling became famous after this historic match and his career has steadily progressed after this tournament, rather than being lost after a one off, which further justifies the nomenclature.

Things were not the same for this Swede, though, till he met Nadal at Phillip Chatrier.

Unlike his precedents, he does not possess the ice cool demeanor of Bjorn Borg, the adaptability of Mats Wilander, the elegance of Stefan Edberg, or the raw, but underutilized, talent of Thomas Enquist. And there is only so much that you can achieve with a big serve and a massive ugly forehand which works best only in normalized conditions under a roof.

Yet, mentally stronger people have fought and achieved much better results with even lesser talent that what Soderling had achieved till May this year.

Read the rest of this entry →