33 posts categorized "Roland Garros 2009"
by Pete Bodo
Mornin'. It looks like that Sprezzatura post (second one down) got a bunch of you animated, and while the celebrations of Roger Federer's historic win at Roland Garros continue on, as well they might, it's time to move along here to the yin to Federer's yang: Rafael Nadal.
Now, I understand the tensions and passions at play, and they sometimes lead fans of one or the other player to have a go at his or her counterpart across the Iberio-Swiss divide, but I really think that denigrating either Nadal or Federer by necessity diminishes the other man. We've seen over the past two years how each of these men is directly responsible for making the other a better, tougher, more dedicated competitor. To some degree, I agree with the "weak era" argument, although you can't hold that against Federer in any significant way. Any era dominated by a single player is, by definition, weak. Duh!
And while you there's a lot of fat to chew on in that issue, this much is undeniable: the emergence of Nadal in the last few years, and the rivalry he's established with Federer, really overshadows any depth-of-field discussion. How weak an era can it be if it boasts both the Grand Slam singles title record co-holder and the greatest of all clay-court players?
In any event, this idea that in Federer and Nadal we have this yin-and-yang thing ought to be taken seriously, and if it isn't it may be because that label gets thoughtlessly slapped onto too many relationships where it doesn't fit nearly as comprehensively. Honestly, can you think of two players more different, in every respect, than Federer and Nadal - but by the same token, two players so intimately bound in destiny?
I must say, we all should have been more receptive to what happened in Paris as soon as Nadal snatched the Wimbledon crown off Federer's head last July. If it was (and frankly, it still remains) a bit of a stretch to expect Federer to beat Nadal on the Parisian clay, but we should have been more prepared to see Federer swarm the ramparts of Court Philippe Chatrier the moment Nadal unexpectedly lost there. I'm not one of those people who thinks that the quality of Federer's victory would have been appreciably greater had he beaten Nadal in the French final; guys like Federer and Nadal understand that measuring themselves against another man, rather than against a task, is essentially to be subservient to that man.
For that same reason, I don't think Nadal gives a hoot about who he beats for the Wimbledon title - although gaining a big title at the expense of a top rival sweetens any player's sense of accomplishment. It's a pleasant aftertaste to savor. So while Federer won Paris without beating Nadal, I still get the feeling that the French Open final was a game-changer in exactly the same way as the Wimbledon final was last July.
It's hard to say when any boy becomes a man, but if we restrict our considerations to tennis, it seems to me that the day Federer won Roland Garros is the day Nadal became a man. For now he's encumbered by the same burden that distinguishes all men from children: responsibility. For the first time in his career, young Rafa has given significant ground, instead of gaining it and that calls for a response. Another way to put this is that up to this point, it's all been net plus for Nadal, and it's a credit to Federer that he's never made a point of this (if he has, I'm sure you'll let me know, and we can forget this clause). But Paris was a net loss - a painful blow suffered right in the heart of his comfort zone, on his own turf.
The rumors that Nadal's parents are about to divorce keep popping up in the gutter press and in my inbox via emails from acquaintances and sources, and I bring it up for this reason only: there's a parallel to be drawn between how domestic turmoil might affect an obedient son who's never questioned the impermeability of the familial cocoon, and how losing dominion over a patch of earth where he has known only spectacular success might affect a young and still not fully formed tennis player.
And before I go on or forget - isn't it just another bewitching aspect of this rivalry that the families of both men seem so level-headed and down-to-earth?
At any rate, any great player will tell you that in some ways it's far less stressful to be the hunter than the hunted. It takes a particular sort of person to comfortably put on that shirt that Pete Sampras says has a "great big target on its back." We don't really know how Nadal will take to that role after he's really been tested a few times, not by new challenges but by losses. By surprises. By setbacks in areas where he expected none. This is all new territory to him, because he's been living an uninterrupted dream since he won Wimbledon, and even his mildly disappointing result at the U.S. Open was moved from the "net loss" to the "net gain" column retroactively, on the grounds that it was good experience that enabled him to win his first major hard court title just a few months later, at the Australian Open.
In one of those art imitates life developments, it seems that Nadal is changing and maturing - and probably facing new and in some ways unanticipated challenges - as a person at the same time that he's morphing into a tennis player with a revised mandate. Don't take this wrong, because I respect Nadal's fighting spirit and his game as much as I ever did, but I no longer feel the same degree of affection I once had for him.
 This is germane for one reason only - it's a measure of how much Rafa has changed, and grown. As little as a year ago, Nadal still was very much like the world's eager, happy-go-lucky, ever so slightly out-to-lunch kid brother. If he resembled a cartoon superhero ("Jet Boy", as you may remember) he transcended the two-dimensional nature of his fictitious brethren because he seemed as personally soft as he was professionally vitrified. You couldn't walk by him in a hallway without wanted to reach out and tousle his hair.
That youthfulness is in ebb now. He is, after all, 23 - and having the body of a sculpture by Michelangelo imposes certain obligations on the subject. The world around Rafa is changing, but the eyes through which he perceives it may be changing at an even more rapid pace. It may seem to him that suddenly he has an awful lot on his plate, and those unaccustomed to operating that way often rebel against having to do so, or feel they can't handle it. I think Rafa is determined, aware and brave enough not to be laid low by that psychological pitfall, but he'll have to prove it.
Here's another yin-and-yang element: Federer often seems like he's made to rule. He doesn't do losing well. This isn't a matter of arrogance and conceit; it's a manifestation of how he perceives the natural order of things, and to him winning is the default state of existence, in much the same way that being doted up and deferred to is a natural state of being for a prince. This helps explain why he's so effective and so seemingly comfortable when he's in complete and utter control. It isn't that he takes particular joy in humiliating Andy Roddick or thumping Nikolay Davydenko. It's just that he innately seems to feel that all is right in the world, and the food chain is most stable, when he's perched on top of it. There's no point holding this against Federer - it's the way of genius.
In that same way, one thing that we can say with confidence about Nadal is that, so far, he's shown that he's made to challenge. The real question is whether he's also made to rule. Up until last July, his greatest asset in macrocosmic terms was the fidelity with which he pursued a seemingly impossible dream - his aim to unseat Federer. Now that he's accomplished that, does he really have the drive, and does he really feel the need, consciously or otherwise, to take on a trickier and more multi-dimensional role? Federer is good at being The Man, and he clearly enjoys being the paragon of tennis. He's at once the conscience and the king of the game, and those two do not, by any means, always go hand-in-hand.
I'm not at all certain that Rafa has a urge to play such roles. What ambition he's had thus far seems completely focused on the tennis court and the result tables. You can see how Federer has more or less groomed himself, to good extent consciously, for his present identity. Whereas Rafa is perfectly content to crush some poor bugger, than play video games until it's time to go decapitate some other journeyman.
There's something very appropriate about Roger Federer serving as the icon of a sport that has always had an up-market, bourgeoisie identity, and it's exactly that smooth and almost slick combination of man and image and game that leaves some people cold, or leads those who are antagonistic to the values implied therein to discredit Federer or his accomplishments. He's like the son every mother would love to have, which means a large number other sons and daughters, especially imperfect ones, would love to stick pins in his eyeballs.
The only thing that Rafa seems to symbolize, beyond the insouciance of youth, is the orgiastic abandon of the athlete-warrior. His sleeveless shirts, bulging biceps, guttural grunts and even that ham-fisted game (for if Federer is Muhammad Ali, Nadal is his Joe Frazier) serve as rebukes to the customary class and style associations of tennis. In the long run, that may be the strongest and deepest source of Nadal's popularity, and the one that will serve him long after his vanishing youth no longer sparks automatic affection or sympathy. And that youth disappearing quickly, as it always does for the gifted and talented. Nadal will always seem a man of the earth and a man of the people; it's as much part of his nature as civilized superiority is of Federer's.
But that still leaves the question hanging: Will Nadal be as great a player when it's not longer about fulfilling a seemingly impossible dream, or scaling an unimaginable heights? For many people, the test is more interesting than the reward you earn for passing it, and accomplishing a particularly demanding task is an end in and of itself. We know why that is: once you've really fought hard for and earned something, the next thing is taking care of it - the next thing is responsibility. Federer is in many ways a very responsible man - you can see it in, among other things, his relationship with his wife, Mirka. Nadal hasn't had to be responsible until now, and over the next few months we'll see how he likes it.
We're very luck that there's an age difference of about four years between Federer and Nadal; in tennis, that's half-a-lifetime. That difference keeps their trajectories from becoming intertwined to the point of confusion. Like candles in a dark gallery, the light they shed also serves to heighten the contrast between them, and it dramatizes each man's signature qualities. For some years now, Federer has been the bar by which Nadal has measured himself. But the events of the last 12 months have taken away that handy yardstick.
In the coming months, Nadal will have to find a new yardstick, or risk returning to the played-out game we might as well call Catching Roger. It will be very, very hard to beat Federer at Wimbledon, which is his Roland Garros, terra sacre. This year, though, Federer will have nothing to prove and nobody to impress. With a win at Wimbledon, Federer will surpass Pete Sampras's all-time Grand Slam singles title record. But more than being a test for that reason, Wimbledon will be Federer's victory lap following the completion of his career Grand Slam. Given that he'll be under no pressure whatsoever, and still basking in the afterglow of his win in Paris, you have to reckon that he's going to be one free-swinging, dangerous hombre.
I suppose those who would like to see Rafa win (or Federer lose) could always hope that Federer gets a dangerous journeyman,. a Robin Soderling or someone like that, in the fourth round at Wimbledon.
It's been known to happen you know, and it can change the tennis landscape.
By Pete Bodo
The events of the past month in the lives of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal remind me of really well-executed novels or films. One plot twist has been heaped on another, sometimes in really inventive ways (Robin Soderling, beat Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros? Hahahahah!), but while these sharp turnabouts are surprising - sometimes jaw-droppingly so - all of them can be explained and none of them strains credulity. Looking back on them, you're inclined to think, Well, that kind of does make sense. . . or, Geez, I shoulda seen that coming!
Roger Federer storming back to beat Nadal to Madrid? Why not - it was on a fast clay-court and at altitude! Rafael Nadal losing at the French Open? Hail, did you think he was going to go undefeated, for life? Robin Soderling (as opposed to David Ferrer or Fernando Gonzalez) taking out Nadal in the fourth round? Sounds crazy, but that selfsame guy got to the final despite having the toughest draw in Paris. Federer winning Roland Garros this year? What, did you think a guy who's been in the last three finals running didn't have a shot. . . And so on.
The only thing that was not really surprising, at least in hindsight, was the surgical precision with which Federer defused the stick of dynamite that is Soderling. And he accomplished that with the kind of shrewd, workmanlike, no-frills strategy and execution that underscored a reality that Federer critics forget, and forget again: Despite all that elegance and artistry, despite the cardigans, hair-care products, runway gawking and man purses, there's plenty of junkyard dog in this guy. He knows where the bone is buried and when he's hellbent on digging it up, it takes more than most people have to stop him. It apparently takes more than any tennis player has, at any rate, and that's his main area of concern.
Sp it was that before playing last Sunday's historic Roland Garros final, Federer got hold of DVD recordings of the last two matches he'd played against Soderling, one in the recent Madrid Masters and the other in last autumn's Paris Masters (wonder how he acquired them so quickly; I can't imagine Netflix has a huge stock of those early-round straight-setters).
On Saturday, Federer studied the videos, thought about what he's surmised from watching Soderling progress so far in Paris, and then he retired to join his wife for a quiet dinner enjoyed in splendid isolation. About 24 hours later, newly crowned as the champion of Roland Garros, Federer revealed what he'd learned on Saturday:
"I saw that he (Soderling) won against guys who were playing very far from (behind) the baseline. So this gave him time to organize and he used his big shots. . .I knew that there would be rallies when we played, and it was important for me to be close to him, to play hard against him, and use the advantages I have on clay. . . I had the feeling that the other opponents let him play too much. This is what I tried not to let him do."
This explanation may surprise those who rather thought that Federer had spent Saturday night nibblling on sashimi with Anna Wintour and the usual gaggle of fashion-industry courtesans, then went out and demolished a finalist desperate to keep punching above his weight. Let's face it, one of the things that makes Federer a somewhat polarizing figure, so attractive to some - but also so off-putting to others - is that he rarely allows us to get a glimpse of the junkyard dog. He leaves that territory to Nadal, and in this way the two men split the world. If you need to put labels on it, let's say it's Naturalists (Nadal's fans) versus Federer's Romantics.
I've been thinking about this aspect of Federer quite a bit, because of all the amazing things you could point out about this guy, the one that keeps striking me, over and over, as unusual to the point of almost being improbable is how utterly unconnected he seems from the way tennis has evolved in the past few years, and from its ruling conventions and stereotypes. One of the reasons Nadal is so popular with youngsters is that he unconsciously sends the message that he is very of the moment, very now - that he's some sort of evolutionary step forward, something tennis has not seen before and for which it has no answer. Nadal literally begs you to make all those arguments about how this isn't your father's game of tennis anymore, about how somehow tennis has gone to a mythical "next level" which may not exist and maybe never did - at least not in so conspicuous, quickly attained way.
By contrast, I can't lay eyes on Federer these days without thinking I'm watching some grainy, 16mm film of just the kind of guy the new millennium game has supposedly left behind - the kind of guy about whom we say, Oh, he was a great player in his time, but he'd never last with the way the game has changed today! Close your eyes, can't you hear the projector click-clacking, and see that blurry image jumping around on the window-shade like drop-down white screen?
Federer is light on his feet, blessed with remarkable feel, and he possesses stores of stamina and determination that are concealed rather than advertised. Nobody looks at him and thinks "next generation," or "specimen." Guys who play, look, and even talk like Federer aren't supposed to have a shot in this game anymore, and the fact that they do (or that he does, proving that at least in theory the possibility exists) is one of the things that makes tennis worth watching and following. The game was supposed to leave his kind behind, yet here is Federer, not only stubbornly clinging to existence, but actually outlasting and proving himself more durable than the specimens. Does he think about these things? Hardly.
After winning his semifinal over Juan Martin del Potro, Federer said: "Even though (I'm happy I won), I was sad for him, because, you know, he's a young player. You always think that there aren't that many opportunities, that many chances for younger players, you know. So I was a bit sad for him when I won."
Swaggering bad boy Jimmy Connors, upon reading that, would probably lick his chips and say, "Get me this weenie." And if that were somehow to have been possible, I know this: Jimbo would have gotten five games, max.
Both as a player and personality, Federer embodies this wonderful Italian word, sprezzatura. It's a difficult word to translate, but the Canadian philosopher Mark Kingwell wrote about it compellingly in an utterly delightful book, Catch and Release.
Fundamentally, sprezzatura is the ability to make difficult things look easy. As Kingwell wrote:
'Grace' doesn't quite capture its extension, though part of it. Not 'elegance' either, though again it is partly right. Vitality and lightness are implied, but sprezzatura is more than gaiety. It's that exhibition of relaxed competence, almost of insouciance, in amateur pursuit of one's goal. . .
It's simply astonishing to me that in this day and age in tennis, a player who so conspicuously embodies this notion of sprezzatura can be the leading player of his generation. Federer is no less an iconic figure in his sport than is NFL quarterback Brett Favre in football. Favre holds that position because he seems the archetypal football player, but Federer earns his distinction while being absolutely atypical. He frequently seems to think, act, and express sentiments nothing like those of a host of iconic tennis players whose qualities were often trumpeted as germane to their station: the bullishness of Vilas, the toughness of Ivan Lendl, the fire of a John McEnroe, the explosive power of a Pete Sampras, that subtle communication of menace that informed the glowering visage of Pancho Gonzalez, or the scary, almost rodent-like bloodlust of Jimmy Connors. But all of pale alongside the easy, it's-no-big-deal domination with which Federer rules.
When he was asked if this Roland Garros title represented 27 years of longing fulfilled, Federer almost laughed as he delivered what may be the best line of his career: "First, I never waited 27 years, because 27years ago I was just born. My parents never told me, If you don't win Roland Garros we take you to the orphanage."
And despite the dedication and discipline required by Federer's role in the game, when he was asked if walking away from the game tomorrow would find him a happy man, he said: "Yeah, it would ‑‑ I always said it doesn't matter when I retire, I'll be at peace. I can walk away from this game tomorrow, but I don't choose to because I love this game too much."
I don't choose to because I love this game too much. . .
Good grief! This guy doesn't appear to want to be a rock star, and if he didn' t pull a Bjorn Borg, jumping into a limo and vanishing into the night, after that loss Nadal pinned on him in Australia, it's unlikely he ever will. Love the game? What an antediluvian notion. . .
There will always be some who revel in characterizing Federer as a girly-man, and I admit I've been a little prone to that myself. We all get trapped in the cliches of our choosing, I suppose, and that's why it's a good idea to stretch your comfort zone now and then, to read a book by a philosopher, even one as entertaining as Kingwell. For if Federer is a throwback, he lands quite a bit further back than Rod Laver's era, or even Bill Tilden's. Kingwell writes:
"Puritanical critics tend to regard sprezzatura as a suspect quality, a polish in manners that indicates overrefinement or even feyness, the transparent self-justification of the fop. But such judgments ignore the real edge that must remain beneath the polish. Castiglione's elegant courtiers or the dandy Cavalier poets of (Izaak) Walton's own time were anything but fey. They were brave, wily, and often dangerous men - men who served with distinction in battles and intrigues.
"Like the dandies of the early Royal Navy or the strutting officers of the Household Guards, these men were as courageous as they were refined in dress and comportment. Only a clod could fail to be impressed by the combination of poetry and military distinction observable in Richard Lovelace or Sir John Suckling. And yet, what military man today would dare admit he read poetry, let along composed it? On the others side, from what poet could we expect to see a display of manly vigour, except perhaps in the vulgar form of drunken brawling at a book launch. There may be such men out there - I really hope there are - but no one could reasonably argue that they form our currently dominant notion of masculine accomplishment."
So there it is - reasons for manly men to feel good about liking Roger Federer, as if he could give a hoot. The brave, wily and often dangerous generally don't.
Y'all know Highpockets (aka Madame 'Pockets), who's been a faithful reader and TennisWorld poet laureate, and how she likes to memorialize every Grand Slam event in a way that no commemorative DVD, special magazine or video (cue Chariots of Fire as we watch slo-mo images of our favorite players in action, etc. can hope to surpass. Here is her latest: OH, MY! Most thought it a sure thing—no thirst left to quench:
Taxes and death and Nadal at the French
Four years in a row and working on five,
The kid from Mallorca would eat them alive. He’d hold up that trophy and Roger would cry,
And Federer’s fans would ask what went awry.
But something strange happened out there on the clay:
Rafa Nadal finally had a bad day. And who was this person—this odd, skinny dude,
Who took down the Spaniard and darkened his mood?
Not Murray, not Novak, but Robin the Swede,
A spotty, but dangerous, twenty-third seed. When Rafa left Paris, all eyes fixed on Fed.
Would he claim his prize - or crumble instead?
Would they crown him the GOAT, the greatest of all,
Or would Robin step up and answer the call? For the last year or so, Roger’s aura had faded,
Eclipsed by Nadal, he often seemed jaded.
We witnessed his anger, we saw him in tears,
And we knew that his gifts would fade through the years. But the umbrellas went up—rain pelted the clay,
And Roger stayed tough and put on a display
Of winners and volleys that showed off his art,
And gave us a glimpse of his courage and heart. A champion’s nature is something so rare
That when it’s revealed, in awe, we just stare.
When the crowd rose as one to give him his glory,
Roger’s tears added joy to this wonderful story. -- Highpockets Ah, the poetess. . . Anyway, in other bits: catching up today, and don't forget you can find me at Twitter, under my name (ptbodo), where I'll be posting news updates, links, and other brief messages on a regular basis. Still trying to get those of you who are following me at the TennisWorld Twitter feed to move to the ptbodo one. . . In the next two days, I'll explain why I believe that Roger Federer's win at Roland Garros was a game-changer, not just for Federer, but for Rafael Nadal. On successive days, I'll look at the present situation for each man, starting with Roger tomorrow. And also, I'm sure the rest of you also noticed how much Roger leaned on his drop shot - a shot that he had previously pooh-poohed, as if it were only for cardigan-bedecked weenies or something. That made me think about how we used to mercilessly tease TW's spiritual adviser, Portugal's Miguel Seabra, who once told us: I have a forehand kind of like Federer's, but I also have a drop shot, which he does not. . . Oh, we got a lot of mileage out of that, often noting that Federer, who hits his forehand much like Miguel Seabra, except that Federer doesn't have the drop shot. . . Of course, Mikey is feeling pretty good abourt things now. We were kidding around about the debate the other day and he took me back to how it all started. In 2006, Mikey rather impertinently asked Roger if it was fair to say that the drop shot was the only weapon missing from his otherwise formidable arsenal. Back then, Roger told Mikey he didn't need a drop shot, because he opened up the court so well with his forehand (in other places, Roger admitted that he thought the drop shot was a cop-out, almost a "panic shot" with which a player hoped to bring a point to a surprise ending). Mikey thinks that Roger changed his thinking on that score for a simple reason: Nadal. This strikes me as plausible in a very basic, direct way, which also makes me wonder if Roger didn't change his mind about the drop shot during that ultimately otherwise fruitless workout session in Dubai with Darren Cahill - with a little help from that coaching candidate. Just something to think about. I'll be back with a red-meat post tomorrow. . . -- Pete
Great news everyone. You'll never guess what Master Ace did. He only went and won TAT's WTA French Open Suicide Pool didn't he? Given his Sharkoesque knowledge of the tour, it was just a matter of time before he did, don't you think/ Patrick (MA) was one of two people who made it all the way to the final but (having picked Safina to win it all) were eventually thwarted by Kuznetsova, the eventual champion.
Here is Patrick's illustrious road to victory.
Petrova - Sharapova - Medina Garrigues - Ivanovic - A. Radwanska - Rezai - Razzano - Azarenka - S. Williams - Cibulkova - Stosur - Kuznetsova - Safina
Please join me in congratulating Patrick on his win.
I should also mention here that although there wasn't a Twibal winner on the ATP contest, Elenas made it all the way to a respectable day 11 before eventually running out of picks. A hearty thump on the back to her as well.
Hope to see all of you play the Wimbledon SP in a couple of weeks.
--Ptenisnet
Note - you can continue to do Queen's match calls and carry on tennis related discussion here. Mildly OT conversation is OK after play for the day has finished.
by Pete Bodo
You couldn't really call him a streaker, and not just because the gawky apparition was wearing black knickers and red-and-white Switzerland stockings, and using the Barcelona football club flag for a cape. And you couldn't dismiss him as a mere clown, looking for attention he could never get any other way. The truth was that this stork-like, balding, whatever-it-was projected something menacing and blink-your-eyes unreal, something ugly in a way that somehow seemed lewd.
After loping onto the court (the crowd watched in rustling disbelief) the court invader (allegedly, someone who calls himself Jimmy Jump) stood there just a few feet from Roger Federer, taunting, shaking that blood-red flag, in a way that might have been described as childish, were it somewhat sinister and other-worldly, and were he not standing at point-blank range from the stunned and perhaps frightened player who was in the process of rewriting the tennis history books.
What might it have been like for Federer at that moment, when a millisecond earlier he had been floating happily in that shimmering, elastic soap bubble of his perfection - leading Robin Soderling, 6-2, 2-1, 15-0, in the final of the French Open that ultimately would earn him a career Grand Slam, tie him with Pete Sampras for the most Grand Slam singles titles in history (14), and vault him, in most eyes, beyond all his Open-era rivals for the title, Greatest Of All-Time.
What might it have been like to have that maniac prancing before him, like something out of a nightmare, a grotesque spook coming back from a terrifying dream Federer once had about Rafael Nadal, and what that dark young Spanish nemesis had done to interrupt the arc of his career at Roland Garros.
And then to have that lurid intrusion into his consciousness - the same well from which Federer had until then been drawing up beauty in buckets, one glowing and elegant shot after another - yank a strange red cap from its head, and try to place it on Federer's, it might have been terrifying in the same way as glancing at your forearm to find an enormous, multi-colored poisonous insect resting there.
 "All of a sudden I heard the crowd, and I looked over and he jumped over the fence or something." Federer recalled later. "That gave me a fright, just like seeing him so close right away. It definitely felt uncomfortable once he came close to me. Looking back, it definitely threw me out of my rhythm a little bit. One game later I thought that maybe I should have sat down and taken a minute or two to kind of reflect on what just happened. Was that real or what? But I don't know. I mean, I wanted to play on and whatever, get over it. But it was a touch scary, yes."
Not scary enough to achieve its presumed intent, to unnerve Federer and throw him off his game. Although Federer lost that game (Soderling was serving) in a flurry of distracted errors, he regained his composure quickly and held his next service game to go up, 3-2. There followed the most dangerous portion of the match, as Soderling began to find his groove and hold serve, while gusts of wind sent red dust devils swirling on the court and the inevitable rains came as the set rolled on toward the tiebreaker.
When the games reached six-all, Federer was ready. Boy was he ready. He served only four points in the tiebreaker. Every one was an ace. I'd call it his career game but for the fact that if all you see Roger Federer do is hit aces, you're missing an awful lot - impressive as it is.
If this was indeed the coronation that seemed inevitable, by the time the actual match started it looked as if were being conducted on Golgotha. A day that had dawned clear and bright with a light breeze had, by match-time, grown dark and heavy with clouds. A cold wind whistled through the ivy on the side of the Court Philippe Chatrier. Soon, the skies would bleed a cold drizzle, imbuing this day with a funereal gloom.
It isn't supposed to be like that, for a coronation, especially a coronation on clay in June at Roland Garros. And most especially not for the coronation of someone like Roger Federer, the man whose game has always radiated ease, grace, along with an almost otherworldly lightness that belies the sting of that marvelously fluid serve, the hiss of that crosscourt topspin backhand, and the snap of that expertly lashed forehand.
It should have been bright and warm, with birds twittering on the limbs of the chestnuts while chic Parisians were Twittering on their Blackberrys and sipping their cafe cremes. The flags encircling the top of Court Chatrier hanging slack, like drapes, to create perfect conditions for a career-defining win.
But this was a tournament of surprises and a day of surprises, and while some are more pleasant than others, surprises are never welcomed by tennis players - at least not unless until they find themselves on the winning end of them. Oh, you could say Robin Soderling taking out Nadal in the fourth round here was precisely that sort of pleasant surprise for Federer, with the added bonus that Federer's opponent on this day of destiny fulfilled would be that same Soderling, still a first-time Grand Slam finalist and victim of Federer's rapier nine times in a row - and with no wins of his own from which to draw inspiration.
Soderling talked a good game before the final, promising to take it to Federer. That was refreshing, because it suggested that whatever else might happen, Soderling was not there to bear witness to history as much as to stop it from happening - which gives you a pretty danged good idea about what it's like playing Federer.
But Soderling's best intentions went to waste, as he learned something critical about the rivalry that existed in his own mind (if not in the record books). "The match was what I expected. I think I didn't play aggressive enough. But every time I play Roger I say, 'I played so bad today. . .' I learned (today) that it's not that I play so bad, it's that he makes me so bad."
He amplified that idea, admitting that he's never played anyone who plays as "fast" as Federer. Nikolay Davydenko also uses that precise word to lament losses in which he's swarmed and overpowered. 'It's much easier for me to be aggressive with Rafa," Soderling went on. "In all the match (his fourth-round upset of the defending champion) I dictated the play. But against Roger so far, it's been impossible for me to do that. Roger's game doesn't suit mine at all because he keeps me on the run all day and that doesn't allow me to be aggressive."
 Still, it wasn't like The Mighty Fed could mail this one in. The pressure he was under was obvious and enormous - how would he have felt being the guy who, with a chance to complete a career Grand Slam etc. etc., lost to the world no. 25 against whom he was 9-0 etc. etc.?
That Federer asserted himself so forcefully and showed such poise in the face of every wicked surprise this day threw at him had to be comforting, and the amount of relief he must have felt was hinted at by his subsequent loquacity. There was a Soderling-grade dose of honesty and realism in his remarks, too:
Addressing his record on clay, Federer politely distanced himself from the otherwise excellent company of John McEnroe, Stefan Edberg and Pete Sampras - other icons who had somehow never won in Paris: "Well, I always tended to disagree with those (suggestions). I had the feeling I gave myself too many opportunities over the years at the French Open.
"I think Pete (Sampras) was maybe once in the semis. Other players were maybe once in the finals. I was in the final three times, one semis before, and I was able to win Hamburg four times and be in the finals of Monaco and Rome, of all those tournaments.
"I knew the day Rafa won't be in the finals, I will be there and I will win. I always knew and that I believed in it. That's exactly what happened. It's funny. I didn't hope for it, but I believed in it."
Now let me backtrack a little and admit to being a bit melodramatic at the top of this post. I had my reasons, but the fact is that Federer did not entirely surrender to fear, or paralysis, when that invader confronted him. It's easy to underestimate how quick-witted he is, and how quickly he processes information, and that's partly why that psychically violent intrusion didn't play a larger role in the match. Going into greater detail on his feelings, he said, in a surprisingly jocular tone:
"The good thing is like it happened before, you know, so that's why I guess I didn't panic. It happened in Wimbledon before when two guys ran out on the court, and once I think it was in Montreal when I lost to Roddick when I was playing for my No. 1 ranking in the third set.
"So it wasn't the first time. Normally they (the invaders) always kind of look at me and go, I'm so sorry I have to do this, because they have some sort of a reason for it, you know (at that point, everyone in the room - including Federer - laughed) I remember the English guy was actually quite funny. He looked at me and goes, I'm so sorry I have to do this.
"I was like, Okay, just don't touch me, you know.
"This guy, I don't know, he looked at me and I was not sure what he wanted. It seemed like he wanted to give me something. So I was actually okay, because I saw he wasn't pulling for anything stupid."
I'll have a broader analysis of Federer's achievement, and the way this tournament may be a game-changer for both Federer and Nadal, in the coming days. Meanwhile, I emailed Pete Sampras shortly after the match and he called me just a few minutes ago.
"This puts him at the top, as the greatest player in my eyes," Pete said. "But you have to be fair to Nadal, too. Rafa's just in the beginning stages of his career, but he has a good record against Roger. So what happens in the next couple of years could be real interesting."
Pete was a little late getting out of bed and saw just the third set, but he felt not a twinge of sadness or melancholy seeing his record equaled. "I was prepared for it, it was not a matter of 'if' but of 'when.' It's also great that he's a friend. Records are made to be broken, I really believe that, and if I'm going to have my record broken, this is the kind of guy I want doing it."
Does anyone agree that when Roger and Mirka have their child they ought to name him or her Robin?
Well, it's T-minus 2 hours and 28 minutes as I write this here in the Roland Garros press room. I wrote an preview of the men's final for ESPN, you can read that post here. Beyond that, I think you can throw discussions about the X's and O's out the window on this one, even though they will ultimately constitute the "official" history of the 2009 Roland Garros final.
What we have here is something that only the most passionate of Federer fans might have expected as few as two weeks ago: a potential career-defining match. For just as a win here over Rafael Nadal in the final would have been the sweetest thing imaginable for the Federer faithful, a loss to Robin Soderling today will be a buzz-kill of remarkable proportions, making any defense of Federer's record sound hollow - even if that defense is utterly legitimate.
BTW, I hope all of you will remain civil and compassionate toward each other, no matter how things turn out. No amount of fanlove justifies the kind of chest-thumping or gloating that a huge match like this will invite- whoever wins.
On another front, a number of the Twibe's lovely chicas have assembled here at the last minute, despite scalper tickets running around $600 per seat in Chatrier. Given the historic nature of this match, that's a bargain, at least if you compare it to trying to get a ticket to, say, the seventh game of the World Series in a major market city. Anyway, Viv and her mum flew in from Cork, Ireland, and Alex and Susan K. from New York, who spent the first week here on vacation, extended their stay, hoping to see Federer make history today (And JB - Susan, Viv and I were going to call you a few minutes ago, but wiser heads prevailed. . .)
 When I walked into the press center this morning, Dick Norman was standing at the desk, talking with one of the press assistants. It occurred to me that he may be trying to reach one of my Belgian colleagues, who sit near me in the work room upstairs. As I passed I said, "Dick, are you looking for somebody?"
"No," he said, "I'm just trying to get a video of a match."
When I was halfway up the stairs, he called after me, "Thanks for that article, I thought it was really great. . ."
We don't often get that kind of feedback from the players, so it's welcome when we do. But I bring this up just to let you know that many players read TennisWorld, and we can all be proud about that, right?
Enjoy the men's final, everyone, it's going to be one helluva day no matter what happens.
-- Pete
As at 10:35 TW time, TypePad is freezing, so an overflow is up. Andrew
And at 1:10pm TW time, Overflow 2..... Andrew
Overflow
Overflow 2
 by Pete Bodo
Roger Federer may not have that elusive Roland Garros title in hand just yet, but according to Svetlana Kuznetsova, he gets an assist for the one she won today, as she derailed Dinara Safina's drive to validate her world no. 1 ranking by taking her first Grand Slam title in three appearances in major finals.
And, in a bizarre turn of irony that even Kuznetsova acknowledges, you can also dole out an assist to another man - the brother of the woman whose dreams she shattered today.
Kuznetsova won in a blowout, 6-4, 6-2 that left Safina barely able to wallow through her runner-up speech in a monosyllabic monotone. But in all fairness, it was her misfortune to play one of the most talented and mercurial players of top pros - one who had faced and overcome the challenges Safina has had such trouble navigating as she's become a contender at majors: finding just the right balance between aggression and prudence, between being emotionally too high and emotionally too low, between self-belief and humility. Kuznetsova passed her trial by fire when she won the U.S. Open singles title in 2004.
In retrospect, that massive if seemingly premature dose of success turned out to be a mixed blessing for Kuznetsova; today, she finally got to enjoy the upside of all she's been through. She handled the climate of the final like she was designed for it: sure-handed, determined, focused. Kuznetsova took command of the match early and put loads of pressure on her opponent. "She (Dinara) must learn to deal with this," she would say in a more private setting after her official presser. "But it's hard and I can feel for her, but you have to do it."
But it was about her own downside that the new Roland Garros champion was most articulate when she sat before the world press, wearing a white sports jacket with some sort of sparkles embedded in the fabric, her streaked blonde hair still pulled back in that pony tail that may be the perfect symbol of her makeover. And that's a transformation that may be deep-reaching.
We don't like to put too much stock in appearances, but sometimes they tell us a great deal. And for long periods in the interim since Sveta won that first major in New York, she seemed oblivious to how she looked, to the point that she sometimes seemed disheveled, unprepared, unprofessional. This mattered because the carelessness and the lack of self-respect that it implied showed in her patchy, undisciplined game - and her results. And while the implications of all this may be discomfiting, it's undeniable that tennis players, especially top players, are generally very fastidious about their appearance and, if anything, overly conscious of style, grooming, and fashion. Their workplace, after all, is in the public eye.
This isn't the most comfortable issue for anyone, including Kuznetsova. When she was asked if it was true that she had no contract with Fila (whose garment she wears), she just replied, "No comment." How can you blame her? Wouldn't you feel a little hurt if you were, like Kuznetsova, a perennial Top 5 player, and nobody thought enough of your overall talent and appeal to offer you a contract?
 Anyway, let's return to the downside, rolling the calendar back to a little over 12 months ago. After she lost in Rome, Kuznetsova left for Moscow, which disappointed her coaches at the Sanchez-Casals Tennis Academy. She told them she didn't want to train; furthermore, she didn't want to return to Spain. She was discontented, and so deeply that over the following months there were times when she wanted to quit tennis. "I never felt it," she remembered, "But I said it."
One of the people she said that to was her friend and confidant, Marat Safin. "I said, 'Marat,' I don't know, maybe I should not play. He said, 'Okay, are you crazy or what? You have unbelievable opportunities. You just have to play.'"
Kuznetsova says that was the worst period for her, and it lasted for most of last year. She really felt the urge to move back to Russia, to Moscow, a longing that panicked some of her acquaintances and advisers. "I had so many people telling me, you won't be able to play here (Moscow), you won't be able to train here, because it's too much information; it's too much destruction, too much night life, or whatever."
Kuznetsova lost in the first round at the Olympic Games in Beijing; given her deeply-felt and oft-expressed patriotism, it was a devastating blow. She lingered at the Olympics, and one day took a gaggle of Russian female basketball players to see the tennis. At the facility, they saw Roger Federer and appealed to Sveta to get Federer to pose for a picture with them.
Sveta rolled her eyes, just remembering the incident. "You know how I love Roger," she said, "and I never came to him myself to ask for a picture. But it's easier to do something like that for other people so I did go to him. And I was looking at him and he was looking at me and he said, 'What do you want?' "
When Sveta told him, he said, 'Sure, no problem,' and posed with the girls. He also had a 10-minute talk with Kuznetsova - the first conversation she'd ever had with the icon. She told him about the terrible time she was having making a decision about where to live, and she says he told her: "Look, it's up to you. You can only depend on yourself. You can control it. If you can live in Moscow and concentrate, do this. If you cannot. . . only you can judge, you know."
Only you can judge. . . somehow, those words, she says, made that light bulb go on over her head. Of course! With the advice ringing in her ears, from a source she so admired, Kuznetsova made her final decision to re-locate for good at the end of the year. She returned to Moscow and began to work hard; soon she hired a new coach; fittingly enough, it was the Billie Jean King of women's pro tennis in Russia, Olga Morozova. Although the relationship did not last (Morozova has since been replaced by former doubles specialist Larissa Savchenko), Kuznetsova gave Morozova, along with Savchenko, significant credit for her win today.
Kuznetsova's friendship with Marat introduces a strange element in this saga, and one that may seem not entirely fair to Dinara. But Kuznetsova sees no reason for Safina to feel threatened or uncomfortable about her closeness with Marat. "There are many, many more tournaments, and she (Dinara) works very hard, she will win it one day. But it's true, me and Marat, we're similar - we hang out a lot, we talk about serious stuff. We go to places - I don't even want to get into what kind of places. . .
"So maybe I am more like him than is Dinara, yet she looks unbelievable like him. She walks like him, her backhand is like Marat's, her hands. . . I don't think she has pressure because of him. She is No. 1 now and anyway I always say pressure is something that just you can put on yourself. So Marat and I, we still friends. He help me a lot last year, with agents and stuff. And he texted me after the match, 'Congratulations.'"
Like some of the best Russian novels, Kuznetsova's personal history is a complex narrative simmering with psycho-dramatic undertones. I don't know about Roger - he seems to have a typically Swiss appreciation for the cut-and-dried. But Marat, now there's a guy who understands. It's quite a triangle.
 This is just a quick little bonus post, coming off the press conference set-up by Longines to (among other things) help raise money for Andre Agassi and Stefanie Graf's pet charities (For Steffi, Children for Tomorrow and the Andre Agassi Foundation).
Both of them, by the way, looked great, Steffi perhaps even more-so than Andre - perhaps because we've only had Steffi in very small doses since she left the game looking stressed, tired, bruised, and not entirely happy. Anyway: Here's Andre on the career Grand Slam he earned here exactly 10 years ago, what it meant to him - and what he's looking for tomorrow:
"It changed my career, and as a result it changed my life. It was probably the most profound moment I ever had on a court, because it was about getting over obstacles and self-doubts I had about winning here.
"Tomorrow, we've got a chance to see history, and Roger having been the second-best best clay-courter in the last five years, earning a spot in the final three times in a row, he deserves this more than I did. It seems a privilege to be able to see history made tomorrow maybe. In some ways it almost feels like destiny. It's going to be exciting.
"To win on all four surfaces, especially in one year, which Roger had an opportunity to do a few times, is probably one of the greatest achievements in sports. To do it in your career is an achievement I'm so proud of - every surface, every condition, demands something different, and also rewards you differently, from the physical challenges to the mental challenges. . . it's highlighted by the fact that it doesn't happen very often.
"I'm pulling for Roger tomorrow, in many respects he deserves it. If it wasn't for one freak of nature from Mallorca, he would have won here a handful of times. He's extraordinarily talented - talk about grace on the court, watching him on the court something special to see. If he does it tomorrow, he'll know for rest of his life what an accomplishment it is.
"For me, the great reward for getting that career Slam is that I have no more regrets. One could argue that I wasted a lot of opportunity in the length of my career with my struggles and dramas, but that one day - winning in Paris - allowed me not to have regrets, not to feel that I had left something undone."
And I ought to add that Andre stopped the translator when he was discussing to point out that where he comes from, "freak of nature" is a term of flattery.
-- Pete
PS - Remember that the Crisis Center thread below is the place to chit-chat about and call today 's match.
 Mornin', everyone. I sent a Tweet this morning on the weather in Paris, and in the interim it's only gotten worse. The next few days isn't looking great, either, although there appears to be a convenient hole tomorrow, mid-afternoon - giving Roger Federer a window for grabbing tennis glory that few players have known. One of the ones who has known it, and whose record even The Mighty Fed is unlikely to match, is Steffi Graf. She's here on the grounds at Roland Garros today, with her husband, some bald liittle dude named Andre, to do some sponsor work for Longines (on behalf of charity).
If I get back from a "media event" with Steffi and Andre in a short while, I'll write about it. And if the women's final is postponed until tomorrow (which seems a real possibility), I'll file a red-meat post later on. Now, if the final goes off as planned, you won't hear from me until later, so enjoy the match and gab about it, or anything else, here throughout the day.
-- Pete
As at 1:40pm TW time, an Overflow post is up. Andrew
Overflow
by Pete Bodo
It can't be all that easy being Robin Soderling, reviled by some, thought by others to possess all the charisma of a toothache, believed in by almost no one. The refrain as Soderling has marched through the draw at Roland Garros has been tinged with a "get this guy outta here" brand of wishful thinking: Surely, this guy can't keep going like this!
I myself called his win over Rafael Nadal "preposterous," and some fans of the deposed champion may never forgive Soderling, but they ought at least to thank Soderling for making it so, well, easy to dislike him. It would be a lot different if Nadal had been beaten by some guy with curly chestnut locks, soulful baby blue eyes, a sibling dying of leukemia and a publicly-declared affection for million-dollar Italian sports cars.
Robin Soderling is not that guy: He's got dark peach-fuzz on his head, budding mutton chops on his cheeks, and bayonet grey eyes. He probably choked to death his only sibling (a sister, one assumes), and can't you see him tooling around the cobbled streets of his native Tibro in Sweden, in a Mitsubishi bearing the bumper sticker: Caution: I Speed Up and Try to Kill Furry Little Animals.
Swedish? some have wondered. Aren't dreamy Stefan Edberg and hunky Bjorn Borg Swedish? Where'd they adopt this guy from?
I exaggerate, of course, but for a purpose. All this simmering anti-Soderling sentiment has come to a head here in Paris, where looks, and even more importantly, personal style, matter - and don't you ever forget it. And the one thing nobody has accused Soderling of is being stylish. This might actually mean something if "stylish" were in any way, shape, or form part of Soderling's job description as a tennis pro, which it is not. As he said, when asked which court he was on for his first match here, and how many people were in attendance:
"I don't know, court 6? 7? Maybe 6? There were a few (spectators) - my coach, my girlfriend. . . But it doesn't really matter for me. I never had any problems playing on big courts, playing on the center court. The courts are still the same. Same measurements. Again, it's just tennis. I mean, I never really cared how many were watching. . .
"I don't like to lose. . . All I wanted since I started playing is to win matches. You know, that's what I focus about. . . I mean, I would really want to win this tournament as much if there were no prize money. I love winning matches."
Soderling's plight is both conspicuous and sufficiently inequitable to make a fair-minded person secretly hope that he gives tennis and all its style-addicted, Blackberry-toting, fickle aesthetes a big fat middle finger by going out on Sunday and winning the French Open. For the only story that could come anywhere close to that of Roger Federer finally bagging the only major title to elude him, tying Pete Sampras's Grand Slam singles title tally, and completing a career Grand Slam would be that of Soderling, ranked no. 25 in the world and thought of as a kind of Travis Bickle of tennis, winning this, his first major.
This is for sure, no matter how you feel about Robin: he's played like a deserving champion here, whatever happens in the final.
Many of these issues percolated within an extraordinary incident that occurred today. Let me set the table. In the first two sets, Soderling had played commanding, flawless, pressure-proof tennis - a soaring, gleaming edifice built on clay but having nothing to do with clay, or the way tennis is thought best played on it. He demonstrated, as have a number of other players (including Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, whose points on terre battue often last no longer than on any other surface) that the easiest way to win on clay is to play aggressively and seize any chance you get to powder the ball. Do that, and execute at an acceptable level, and the red-dirt world is your oyster.
That's just what Soderling did to build his lead, using Gonzalez's torrid pace to his own advantage, finding the lines and corners with his serve, challenging the one called Gonzo to hit just as many gigunda, monstro-boy forehands as he wished. Live your dreams, hombre, but expect a good number of them to come flying back at you, with return postage due. . .
The third set spooled out, on serve, with no sign of a letdown by Soderling. Game after game went on serve until, with Soderling serving to stay in at 5-6, he cracked. At 15-30, he held back just that little bit on the kind of typical forehand that he'd been drilling, and his caution caused an error. Next point he tried a forehand approach, but that too was tentative and doomed to spin out in the net.
Suddenly, Gonzalez was in it, and he made the most of it. He struggled and sloughed off two break points to hold the first game, and by then his serve - good already - had become lethal. The two men traded those big groundstrokes like a pair of prizefighters standing flat-footed, swinging away, and neither could take clear advantage through eight games.
 Gonzalez served the ninth game and won the first point. The next point ended with a Soderling forehand that Gonzalez saw out, but the linesman let stand. Gonzalez asked umpire Emmanuel Joseph (ed note: his is a correction from earlier version, in which name of the umpire was wrong) to check the mark, whereupon Gonzalez accused Joseph of pointing to nothing as he decided that that the ball was good. Joseph retreated to his chair. Gonzalez soon followed him, still complaining and making his case. The crowd was restless, but patient.
When Gonzo realized he'd lost that battle he stalked toward the baseline, still angry, and spontaneously changed direction and plopped right down on the mark, with both cheeks (the southern ones) - effectively wiping away whatever was there. The astonished crowd tittered, then laughed. Quite a bit of time had passed by then, and when they resumed, Gonzo lost the first point. Gonzo won the second, but when Soderling slowly walked forward to take a look at the mark, you would have thought he was menacing Carla Bruni; the fans erupted in raucous jeers and whistles. Knowing better than to provoke them, Soderling kept his head down and retreated to the baseline.
Double standard, anyone?
Worse yet for Soderling, Gonzo swept the next few points to take the game and broke Soderling easily to level at two-sets apiece. Then Gonzo reeled off the first three games of the fifth set and by then it looked like it was over - it started pretty but looked to end ugly for Soderling. What could he have been thinking? Oh, my Thor, Bjorn came all the way down from Asgard to watch this and now I'm going to blow it, so big-time!
Actually, Soderling was thinking no such thing. As he said of that period in his presser afterwards:
"It' s hard, I think, for everybody to stay focused in a full five-set match. We played for a lot of hours, and I didn't really feel that I lost too much of concentration. I mean I just felt he was playing really well. He didn't give me any opportunities to play well. But, you know, I'm really happy that I turned things around at the end."
It was, indeed, some finishing kick by Soderling. He quietly re-built his game and held to 2-4, when allowing another break would have been tantamount to suicide. And that's when Soderling found the A game that has propelled him through this tournament, one more time. Gonzalez admitted that he lost just that wee bit of confidence in the shot that had served him so very well throughout the match, his serve. In the fourth set, he had hit his high-water mark, serving 71 per cent. His decline in the fifth was nearly imperceptible, but critical.
"Even if he (Soderling) did like three good returns," Gonzo said, "I have a little doubts with my serve. I try to go - try to play with (rely on) my first serve to try to win some free points, like I did in the past sets. But I felt the match was in my hands, that why I didn't want to have to hit second serves. That's the only mistake I did. It's a mistake because I lost the match. If I win, maybe it can be a good decision."
In other words, just when Gonzo needed his serve most (or thought he did), it didn't produce for him.
I must say, I'm not sure any player has defied the odds (and the predictions) both in the big picture (round-by-round) but also in the micro-situations. How often did someone whisper: He's in trouble now. . . I knew he couldn't keep it up. . . He's going to crumble. . .no way he can come back now. . But no trouble was insurmountable, a few loose stones and mortar were all that crumbled off the tower, and while you can't say Soderling ever needed to come back from desperate straits (except late today), there were numerous moments through these two weeks when a lost point here, a moment of doubt there, could have unleashed a landslide of difficulties. It's ever thus in tennis, most particularly for players who are overachieving but also finding themselves in increasingly unfamiliar territory.
One of the psychologically juicier aspects of Soderling's run here is that he entered as a pariah of sorts, a guy about whom fellow players grumbled because he often walked with his head down, disinclined to say hello. The locker room has conventions, starting with the universally embraced belief that a truce exists in there, and players are duty bound to be cordial and companionable. Then Soderling took out Nadal, with whom he had admittedly had some issues in the past, and refused to feign sympathy for him. He also seemed prickly, hard-edged, unwilling to meet anyone halfway to seem more a part of the ATP fold.
While he hasn't changed his MO in that regard, by the end of the long run-up to the final he seemed in some ways a changed man - a more mature and self-confident one, if not necessarily a more convivial one. He appeared thoughtful rather than reticent, hardened rather than brittle. Soderling is no stripling, but it may be that he grew up a little these past two weeks, became calmer if not softer.
When the conversation in the presser drifted that way, he said, "I'm not sure if I'm that shy. For sure I'm not going to change, you know. I feel like I'm still the same person. This is just tennis for me. Yeah, maybe they're right (the players). Maybe I don't say 'hi' all the time, but I'm always - I've always been a little tense before matches, you know, always a little bit nervous. I don't like to speak too much before my matches. That's just the way, you know, I am. There's nothing - has nothing to do with the other players."
Soderling is an unusual character; in some ways he's a throwback to certain other players whose personalities weren't all sweetness, light and sound bites perfectly calibrated for a stylish audience. One thinks of Bob Hewitt, Kevin Curren, Steve Denton, even the young Lleyton Hewitt, all of whom may not have been great guys, but who probably were good men.
|
