Soderling Continues Slam Success

© Getty ImagesRobin Soderling is through to his second Grand Slam quarter-final of the season.

Robin Soderling became the 10th different Swedish man to advance to the US Open quarter-finals Monday in New York. The 12th seed booked his place in the last eight when two-time semi-finalist Nikolay Davydenko retired due to a left thigh injury with Soderling leading 7-5, 3-6, 6-2 in the first match of the day on Louis Armstrong stadium.

The 2009 ATP World Tour season has seen the 25-year-old Soderling make a breakthrough at Grand Slam level. The Tibro native handed World No. 1 Rafael Nadal his first-ever defeat in the fourth round at Roland Garros before going on to reach his first major final, which he lost to Roger Federer, and made the fourth round at Wimbledon – where he also lost to eventual champion Federer.

Prior to this year, Soderling had never advanced past the third round of a Grand Slam championship. He is bidding to become the first Swedish man to reach the US Open semi-finals since Joachim Johansson in 2004 (l. to Hewitt), but will have his work cut out for him as he faces five-time defending champion Roger Federer.

Soderling pinpointed the turning point as coming in the week before Roland Garros, when he represented Sweden at the ARAG ATP World Team Championship. “I started to work really hard with a lot of things in my game, and after a couple of months it started to pay off. I think I actually played very, very well the week before Paris, won a lot of good matches, and I think that's where it kind of turned around a little bit. So I came into Paris with very good confidence.”

Soderling, who reached a career-high No. 12 in the South African Airways 2009 ATP Ranking on 20 July, had to endure hindered preparation for the final major of the year, withdrawing from a quarter-final clash with Juan Martin del Potro at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic with an elbow injury – that also kept him out of the Rogers Cup – and suffering a first-round exit to Lleyton Hewitt at the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters.

The right-hander, who attributes much of his new-found success to his coach, former World No. 2 Magnus Norman, hit back to defeat Olympus US Open Series winner Sam Querrey in the last round and recovered from a break down in the first set of his clash with Davydenko to assume a one-set lead. The No. 8-ranked Davydenko worked hard to re-establish himself in the match and capitalised on two Soderling double faults to break serve twice and win the second set. The Russian struggled with his left thigh injury increasingly in the third set though and, after surrendering his serve twice to trail by two-sets-to-one, was forced to concede defeat.

The 28-year-old Davydenko, who will now return home to have further tests on the injury, said: “[It] was okay to play the first, second set, I was moving well. I think in the middle of the second set I felt I really had some pain in the muscle, and every point I had more and more pain.” The Volgograd native reached back-to-back semi-finals at the US Open in 2006-07, losing to Federer on both occasions.