Robin Soderling claims his second title of 2011 at Rotterdam
Sweden’s Robin Soderling, overcame Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the final of the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam to defend his title for the first time in his career. The score-line of the match was 6-3, 3-6 and 6-3.
The world number four started aggressively and won the first set easily. He dominated the set and took full advantage of the bad service of Tsonga, who only managed to win 46 percent points on is first serve. The second set proved to be much tougher for
Soderling as Tsonga started to play aggressive tennis. He served consistently well in the second set and also broke the Swiss in the sixth game of the set, taking a 4-2 lead. This lead was enough for Tsonga and the Frenchman took the set easily, winning 16
out of 17 points on first serve.
The third set was intense and both players started the set with good serves. However, Soderling took advantage of continuous unforced errors by the Tsonga in the eighth game of the set, breaking his serve to take the lead. This gave Soderling the opening
he needed and he pushed through to win the match.
After the game, Soderling stated, “I had many tough matches this week. I had to fight a lot for every match. I was lucky, I had the margins on my side. I think to win tournaments like this, you need to of course play well, but you need a little bit of luck
as well.”
Soderling stated that he was confident of a win at Rotterdam as he has always performed well there. He was the winner in 2010, defeating Mikhail Youzhny and was also runner-up in 2008 in the same tournament. The Swede vowed to have a very good 2011. He said
that he had lost only one match in the three tournaments played so far this year, winning two tournaments and his confidence was sky high. He expected his performance to continue throughout the season.
On the other hand, Tsonga was not disappointed after losing the match to Soderling. He said that everything was headed in the right direction for him and he will be looking forward to win some titles in the ongoing season.
Tsonga has never won a match against Soderling and the Swede improved his record to 4-0 over the Frenchman. However, Tsonga claimed that he played better tennis compared to the his past encounters with Soderling.
The Frenchman last won a title in 2008 but he has had several injury problems after that, which have halted his progress. He will be looking forward to end his 15-month title drought and claim a title soon.
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