Hey dude, where’s your ’24′ jacket?
June 1st, 2010 • roger failderer, sodermort
In case you are the worst tennis fan ever/lives in a bubble, half an hour ago, this happened.
And it was amazing.
I feel this is the way of the Tennis Gods repaying me for the utter disaster that was the Holy Slam in 2009. Being there and having to deal with my baby Rafa‘s loss to the devil incarnated was a quite traumatic experience. But you know what they say: that everyone has a bit of evil in them (Do people say that? Or did I just make that up?). Today, the devil won. AND I LOVED EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF IT.
The match was high-level and competitive. Soderling was bashing the ball like there was no tomorrow, making Federer play defensive. I have a feeling that if the Swiss had gotten more first serves in (I didn’t even check the stats), the match could have gone differently. Soderling was really pouncing on those second serves. Hitting backhand and forehand winners all over the court. In the end, he held tight to those crucial breaks and got the match. That was some superb tennis from him.
I’d put the devil as the second biggest contender for the title now. It’s funny how he wasn’t even having a good clay season and, yet, he comes to Paris and pulls of the biggest upset once again. Even with the crowd heavily against him (stfu, Frenchies).
Federer’s loss means that if Rafa takes the title, he’ll go back to the number one position. This slam just got a lot more interesting.
Answer: I have tried and failed several times to keep blogs up. Why? Because I don’t like doing serious journalism unless there’s money showing up in my bank account — and there wasn’t. This blog will have no interest in being impartial or, you know, actually talking about the sport (ok, maybe from time to time). There are tons of other blogs (and news websites) that do this job pretty well already. Here we will discuss the shallow part: the outfits, the gossip, the outrages and who Fernando Verdasco is currently dating.
“I have a feeling that if the Swiss had gotten more first serves in (I didn’t even check the stats), the match could have gone differently.”
You’re right. At one point in the fourth set they showed a piece of statistic on TV – first serve percentage per sets. For Soderling, pretty much steadily high. For Federer, great in set one, a dramatic gradual drop in all other sets.
It was cold, his bad back got stiff. His serve is his main weapon these days. So yeah.