Robin Soderling’s Player Profile
Robin Soderling is a professional tennis player from Sweden. Born on 14 August 1984 in Tibro, he was the first tennis player to beat Rafael Nadal in the French Open tournament in 2009. Just yesterday, Soderling successfully managed to end the French Open reign of defending Champion Roger Federer in a nail-biting quarterfinal. With this upset, Federer’s record streak of 23 consecutive Grand Slam semi-finals has been quashed.
Soderling’s father is a lawyer while his mother is a house wife. Apart from tennis, he likes to play table tennis, goes to the country side for fishing, watching films and driving around in his own car. The Swedish player started playing tennis at a very young age of 5 years. In November 1998 in Luxembourg, Robin at the age of 14 entered the international tennis circuit. He lost his first official match of the junior tournament to Fred Hemmes Jr. However, Robin achieved a series of four victories towards the end of his first year in the junior tournaments. Moving on the same lines of success, Robin won three more titles in the juniors in the following year. With this, he was ranked as the number four junior player by the end of 2001. Robin turned pro in 2001 and won his first ATP tournament match against Ramon Delgado in Stockholm.
The right handed player achieved a record of 16–8 victories in the Challenger Circuit. Robin also reached the final of the U.S. junior Open Tournament but had to face defeat in the end. Finally, in 2003, the Swedish made his way to the final of the ATP Tournament in Stockholm. Due to this win, his rankings soared to number 86 towards the end of the year. However in 2004 at Lyon, Soderling got his first ATP title after beating Xavier Malisse of Belgium in the final match of the tournament. Having successfully reached the final at Marseille, Soderling jumped to the top 50 rankings in the world towards the end of the year.
Due to a critical injury, Robin had a knee operation in 2005. Having not fully recovered from the hiccup, Robin still went on to win the Milan title. However, his injury issues prevailed and he went through another surgery in the same year.
After his comeback in 2006, Robin, within a short period of three months climbed to the ATP top 50 rankings. Although the Swedish player couldn’t play at his best all throughout the year but he ended up at a career-high ranking of 25 in the world.
During 2007, Soderling made it to the 32nd round at Wimbledon but lost the match to Rafael Nadal. In the same year, he failed to reach the finals of the ATP Tournament. During 2008, Soderling played the Open 13 Marseille, the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament, the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships, the 2008 World Team Cup, Beijing Olympics and finally the U.S. Open, thus finishing off the season with a career ranking of 17.
During 2009, Soderling announced the name of his new coach who was Magnus Norman. In spite of playing well, the Swedish during the season won consecutive matches in the ATP Tour before Rafael Nadal defeated him in the third round of a controversial match. Due to his injuries, the Swedish tennis player couldn’t play at his best.
Robin Soderling finally made his way to the fourth round of the Grand Slam by taking part in the 2009 French Open. It was over there that Robin recorded the biggest upset of the season by beating the defending Champion Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros. The match was definitely one of the biggest upset in the history of tennis. With this victory, Soderling became the first and only tennis player so far to defeat Rafael Nadal in a best-of-five-sets match on a clay court. Two days later, the man reached his first major semi-final by defeating Nikolay Davydenko. His ranking jumped to 12 in the world when he reached his first Grand Slam final in 2009.
Soderling has grown as a mature player with every match that he has played so far. The man is known for his brutal style of playing. With a dependable and solid back hand, he is capable of an excellent return game. And once again, his powerful game and mental strength has earned him a big win against defending champion Roger Federer in the French Open 2010. All these performances promise for a brighter future in the days ahead.
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