Robin Soderling defeats Tsonga to challenge Roger Federer at Abu Dhabi semi-final
World Number 5, Robin Soderling has announced his intention to stage an exciting semi final against World Number 2 Roger Federer at Abu Dhabi, after the Swede ousted French player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in three sets. The match was a tense showdown, with a close
second set before Tsonga lost out to hand the 6-1 decider to Soderling.
Soderling got off to a good start during the match, earning an important break in the first game. He cruised ahead to a 3-1 lead, which gave him enough stretch room to win the first set comfortably at 6-4. Meanwhile, Tsonga seemed to reinforce his play and
bounce back in the second set to take a 4-3 lead. He went on to win the set in a close tiebreaker, 7-6(5). This is quite a feat for the Frenchman, who suffered from injury all season.
However, the final set was exclusively Soderling’s, as the Swede took the lead with 3-0. He allowed his opponent just one game, and wrapped up the match with a fry in the third set at 6-1.
Soderling praised Tsonga for his gameplay at the match, saying, “I have been in the same situation [referring to Tsonga’s injuries in the last season] couple of times and it’s very hard. You have to be very positive and practice as much as you can. You can
do other things when you can’t play tennis like work out in the gym and other stuff. It looks like he has trained very well doing other stuff in his break because he played really well. If he can stay injury free he can be a very dangerous opponent.”
Robin Soderling now plans to take on former World Number 1 Roger Federer at the first semi-final of the event, held at Zayed Sports City in Abu Dhabi. The 26 year old player defeated Federer for the first time in thirteen matches at the same championship
last year, and seems to be sure that he can repeat the performance.
Soderling commented on matches against Federer, saying, “It’s always great to play against him. He is one of the best players of all time. It’s going to be a good match and I’m sure it’s going to fun. I beat him in Paris and here last year. We had many good
matches but it’s always tough playing him. Every time I play him I learn something.”
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