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By Richard Pagliaro
Photo Credit: Costantini/Internazionali BNL D'Italia
(June 3, 2010) The red clay of Court Philippe Chatier will never be confused with a mud-wrestling ring, but things could get intense should Rafael Nadal and Robin Soderling grapple in the dirt in Sunday's French Open final.
They aren't exactly friends, the bad blood between them bubbled to a boil at Wimbledon three years ago and now Nadal and Soderling are on course for a climactic clash in the French Open final. But first Soderling must overcome Tomas Berdych in what could be a tough test in tomorrow's semifinals, while Nadal enters his match against first-time semifinalist Jurgen Melzer as an immense favorite to reach his fifth French Open final in the last six years.
Should the pair prevail tomorrow, the final would be a rematch of their stirring fourth-round match last May, in which Soderling overpowered the muscular Mallorcan in pulling off one of the most monumental upsets in Grand Slam history to snap Nadal's 31-match winning streak in Paris.
The 6-foot-4 Soderling is not a classic clay-court player. Soderling doesn't construct points he deconstructs them swinging with the force of a demolition expert detonating baseline blasts to blow apart points. It is a style that produced explosive winners in surprising Nadal and Federer in successive seasons.
"Maybe I don't have the typical clay court game, but I think I can do well on every surface," Soderling said. "Actually, I think I kind of like the slower surface a little bit more than the really fast ones. The last couple of years I played better and better on clay. So when I serve like this and when I'm feeling like I'm hitting the ball well like this, you know, I think maybe clay is my almost my best surface."
Nadal, who takes the high road with all the vigor he shows in racing back to the baseline after the opening coin toss, said revenge will not be a major motivation if he gets another shot at the fifth-seeded Swede.
"I never think about revenges. And I am in semifinals against (Jurgen) Melzer. Will be very difficult match. So I am focused on that match right now," Nadal said. "I gonna tell you that right now. When I go on court, I don't think if I lost last time is gonna be revenge. I never go by this way. I think that's if you think of that, you think this way, your mind is not 100 percent calm to think what you have to do."
Four-time French Open champion Nadal will be an overwhelming favorite when he faces the surprising 29-year-old Melzer in a battle of lefthanders in the semifinals. Melzer, who was 0-11 in Grand Slam third-round matches prior to this French Open fortnight, before becoming the first Austrian man since Thomas Muster in 1995 to reach a Grand Slam semifinal.
A highly-motivated Nadal has roared through this draw without dropping a set fueled by his desire to regain the Roland Garros title he owned from 2005-2008, his shot to reclaim the World No. 1 ranking if he wins the title and the prospect of making history by becoming the first man to capture all three Masters 1000 clay-court championships — Monte Carlo, Rome and Madrid — plus the French Open in the same season.
Soderling, the 2009 French Open runner-up, will face a tougher task in the form of Berdych, who crushed the hard-hitting Swede, 6-2, 6-2, in their most recent meeting in the Miami semifinals. Berdych won his only clay-court meeting with Soderling at the 2007 Monte Carlo. But Soderling has lost just one French Open match in the last two years and is coming off an impressive win over Roger Federer.
Soderling snapped Nadal's 31-match French Open winning streak last spring and showed
he's no French Open fluke in overwhelming World No. 1 Federer in the quarterfinals, snapping the defending champions record streak of 23 consecutive major semifinals.
Even before Soderling upset Nadal last May there was no love lost beween the pair.
During Nadal's five-set win over Soderling in the 2007 Wimbledon, Soderling, frustrated by what he believed was Nadal's delilberate stalling tactics between points, openly mocked the Spaniard by picking at the seat of his shorts, a move Nadal is known for.
After the match, both men made disparaging remarks about each other.
"He’s very strange. I say hello seven times to his face and he never answers. I thought it was me but I asked around the locker room and almost nobody has anything nice to say about him. If I fall down, he says nothing. He touches his ass, grabs his pants, makes fun of me — very unprofessional." Nadal said at the time.
Past animosity could create French fireworks should the pair square off on Sunday.