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by Pete Bodo
After Robin Soderling buried Tomas Berdych's hopes in the red clay of Roland Garros with that post-mawl forehand and piledriver of a serve, I told Berdych that we've often quizzed his own beaten opponents on what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a Berdych forehand, or serve, a question that often inspired them to poetic heights of which they never thought themselves capable.
How would he, ordinarily the punisher, describe the punishment inflicted on him today by scariest man in tennis, Soderling? I should have known better than to ask.
Men like Berdych, or Soderling, don't do poetry. Demolition - yes. Blacksmithing - sure. But not poetry. Besides, Berdych is a Czech, and some of that outfit can make a Scot - say, Andy Murray - appear a regular Jerry Seinfeld.
What is it like, warding off those blasts from Soderling?
"Yeah, I think it's gonna be the same (as it would be playing me). I'm gonna be in the side of those guys who's gonna play against me, you know. He's. . .yeah, I'm gonna repeat the same. He's playing really aggressive, you know. That's the style what he likes, serving quick serves. Yeah, that's pretty much what you can see from him on the court."
Is it a heavier ball, is his serve significantly tougher? Forget the poetry, bub; a little ordinary prose will suffice.
"I don't know. Maybe he's doing it well, he's doing it a little bit better than the others, you know. He's in the finals. Yeah, he's doing quite well. That's his style, what he likes to play. That's what he's doing on the court. He's winning."
In this case, winning a knock-down, drag-out five-setter, 6-3, 3-6, 5-7, 6-3, 6-3.
The grueling nature and length of the match (3:27) may have had some influence on Berdych's desire to forget this Soderling. He'd had enough of the guy for one day. But also, fellas like Berdych and Soderling tend toward the tight-lipped and bottled up. You don't ask a gunfighter to rhapsodize about the powers of his most mortal enemy, and that's a little what it's like with these two. Not that there's any enmity between them, but one reason I was interested in this match is because Soderling has usurped a role that, at one time, Berdych seemed destined to play. It must be a bitter shot to throw back, for a guy who's only 24 years old - and barely younger than his rival.
It's been a long time since Berdych arrived on the tour with a rumble of thunder, flooring pundits with his big game. His roller-coaster ride has always been puzzling, and over time he's come to be seen by many as more like a mercurial journeyman than Grand Slam contender. In fact, Berdych's victory over Andy Murray here in the fourth round was his first against a Top 10 player at a major, and this was his first semifinal in a Big Four event. There's a good reason why seeing his name in a Grand Slam draw in recent years has inspired mostly a shrug. He acquired his reputation the old-fashioned way: he earned it.
Soderling, by contrast, had never been highly touted, and over the past five years his ranking has trended upward slowly and inexorably, to his current position of No. 7. Over the past year, the best 12-month period in his career by far, he's convinced even the most skeptical that he belongs at or near the top; his back-to-back Roland Garros final appearances (he lost to Roger Federer in last year's championship match) confirm it.
So while these are like-minded and nearly equally imposing players (Berdych, at 6-5, is an inch taller), the fact is, Soderling stole Berdych's thunder. And nobody likes to give up something he may have presumed to own. Not without a fight.
Berdych had an opportunity to wage that battle yesterday, and he did it well. But in the end, the match served mostly to demonstrate just why Soderling has eclipsed Berdych as a manjack. It doesn't make a great deal of sense to dwell on the particulars of this harsh, physical shoot-out. As Soderling said afterward, when asked about his 63 unforced errors:
"There's someone sitting and writing down the unforced errors, and I think it's tough for anyone to say what's an unforced error and what's not. So I don't really look at the statistics like that, you know. He put me under a lot of pressure, and it was tough today. That's why maybe I missed a little bit more than I wanted to."
I think Berdych nailed it - banal as this will sound - when he said:
"Well, I don't know if I can find, well, like a moment when it turned to the other side. But I think actually the very important moment was in the first set when I lost my serve [it was just the sixth game of the 48 they would play]. I think that game was not good from my side, you know. I made really two easy mistakes, lost easy my serve, you know, and I think that that was very important. Because [if it weren't for that] I could stay with him, and then had a couple of chances to make a break, you know - finish the first set on my side. Then all the match could be different."
By losing the first set, Berdych set himself up for an uphill battle, and while Soderling lost the second and third sets - he did appear a little nervous - he didn't have to expend nearly the same degree of mental and emotional energy over a sustained period as Berdych. That dwindling fund of energy went hand in hand with a loss of physical energy; the result near the end for Berdych was poor serving. In general, Soderling was the stronger man as the fifth set spooled out.
As Berdych said, "For me, it's really hard and just taking so much energy, you know, to play on this slow surface [clay]. You know, that's just show I need to go back home, work hard again, and just be ready for next year clay court season, and, you know, be better than this year."
Soderling's ability to absorb Berdych's most furious salvos pointed to another element that the long-term record also supports. Soderling is just that much tougher, mentally as well as physically. Berdych might be loath to do it, but he could do worse than measure himself against Soderling, not just in the contest for maximum service-speed or in a test to see who can burn more felt off the ball, but in terms of what he needs in order to be the one who moves on to play on the final day.
Soderling was a little more forthcoming in talking about Berdych's game, although he's unlikely to win any prizes for oratory either. He said, "Yeah, he's tough to play. Today was really tough to really play my own game, because he didn't give me any time at all. The conditions were much quicker, and he was hitting the ball really hard and really flat. So, again, yeah, it was tough to play today."
Soderling's reticence, though, seems more calibrated; more of a weapon than in inclination. He's never been the most beloved of characters, among either his peers or fans in general, a fact that has troubled him not at all. Under the guidance of his coach, Magnus Norman - no chatterbox himself - Soderling has quietly shut the door on the outside world.
It isn't like Soderling has no thoughts or opinions, he's just keeps them under wraps. It isn't like he doesn't have eyes. He just squeezes them shut. The guy's favorite movie is The Gladiator. Don't expect him to tell us all about his relationship with his father.
When Soderling was asked about the scarcity of fans in the court Chatrier at the start of the match (a chronic problem at the French Open, where that additional glass of champagne or wedge of St. Andre cheese is just too tempting for the corporate lunch bunch to resist), he said: "No, I didn't notice."
Pressed on it, he reiterated: "No. Well, I was really focused on my match. No, it doesn't really matter. But I think at the end it was pretty full, eh?"
He noticed that, didn't he. . .
The next time Soderling sets foot on that Chatrier court, it will be as full as when he left it. He'll be playing Rafael Nadal, who hammered into oblivion Jurgen Melzer, a surprise semifinalist who wears a replica of Mickey Mouse on his choker.
In his on-court interview immediately after the match, Nadal was asked about the hot, dry conditions and he wasted no time in saying how the increased court speed and enhanced bounce provided by those conditions helped his topspin shots leap from the clay. He did not say that he hoped the conditions would hold up until Sunday, but I imagine he was thinking it.
Rain or shine, I can hear the distant rumble of thunder.
For more on the nature of clay-court tennis, and Rafael Nadal's history at Roland Garros, please check out my recently published e-book, The Clay Ran Red.