Notes On the Anti-Christ

!103731887 by Pete Bodo

New York—It was a gorgeous day under post-hurricane blue skies, filled with brilliant white clouds sailing through the ether like so many shanked backhands in a Federer vs. Nadal match, a beautiful day for a massacre. And I knew of at least one player who's cut out to perform that job, Robin Soderlng.

You know, the fella seen by fans of Federer, Nadal, or even both as...the anti-christ. The lumbering, brutish, inward Swede not known for his contributions to charity, his buddy-buddy relationship with celebrity athletes, or cameo appearances in music videos. Soderling. The guy who always looks as if just rolled in from a few weeks of felling 300-foot tall evergreens somewhere just south of the Arctic Circle.

Soderling is a constant threat to our conviction that while size and power matter in tennis, they don't count for all that much. And he challenges that assumption in a way that some may find intimidating. He's a histrionics-free tennis player; where others make a fist and pump it, or punch the air, he merely jiggles his after winning a particularly important point, like a reprobate preparing to roll the die at the craps table. Nor does Soderling have any of the trademark exuberance that has become de rigeur in the era of Nadal. His joie de combat is that of a mature man engaged in serious business, not that of a boy succeeding at a sometimes frustrating game. Soderling rolls into a tournament like a gathering storm; it's all lull until all hell breaks loose.

I went out to watch Soderling lock horns with Thiemo de Bakker, a 21-year-old from the Hague, Netherlands. Like Soderling, de Bakker is 6-foot-4, but he gives away nearly 50 pounds in weight advantage (or disadvantage, given that lugging kilos around a court on a hot day is part of the job description). De Bakker is a work in progress ("I need to get more decent with a few things," he concedes, "with executing shots") but he makes good, lean power and can serve bullets.

It was windy out on Armstrong; so much so that when a puff or gust hit the chair umpire's mike, it sounded like the rumble of thunder under a bright sun. Soderling eschewed the obligatory headwear, and while it's cooler than it's been, I get the feeling that it's just as much a reflection of his Spartan proclivities (I'll bet this guy don't need no stinkin' sunblock, either). Soderling survived a five-set scare in the first round, but then he crushed pile-driving Taylor Dent in straights, so I was half expecting the blowout and that's just what we got: Soderling beat de Bakker ("D-Bak," as one New Yorker accustomed to the construction kept shouting) 6-2, 6-3, 6-3.

This gave me a good opportunity to focus on Soderling, rather than the particulars of the match, so let's wander through my notebook:

Set 1: Soderling broke right off the bat, and never relaxed his grip. What struck me right off the bat was the dimensions of his upper body. This guy has wide shoulders, lumberjack shoulders. When he walks, his weight is distributed equally on the balls of his feel, but you can almost feel gravity tugging him from behind; he sometimes looks like he's in danger of falling over backwards. He often hits his forehand from an open stance, his belly protruding, but he gets an enormous amount of power from a combination of shoulder rotation and racquet-head speed.

Set 2: The match was only 32 minutes old and Soderling was already up a set and a break. After he hit one of his many inside-out forehand winners, the fan behind me could only cluck, "Nice...nice...nice." We rightly think of Soderling as a power player; a guy who loads up and goes for broke. While that's an accurate description, it's also true that Soderling has really well grooved strokes, off both wings. His stroking discipline is extremely high for so explosive a guy, which is one of the things that makes him different from, say, Fernando Gonzalez.

One of Soderling's more subtle assests is that he hits relatively flat or with a great deal of spin with equal proficiency. His timing is so good that you can tell whether he's hitting relatively flat or with spin without even looking at the path or angle of his racquet head as he swings. You can hear what he's doing; it's clear as a bell. It struck me that this is a very well-coached guy (credit to Magnus Norman), and when I shared that impression with Soderling afterward he said, "We've been working on many different things.... We've been working a lot on my footwork, on my movement around the court, and also on playing a little bit more aggressive, coming to net sometimes."

Of course, there's only so much you can do with a guy like Soderling, who's OK once he gets rolling, but not so easily started. Sometimes, you can see that his torso is willing but his feet are not, so he wastes a half-step—it almost appears as a stutter-step—moving out. It's as if he needs to go in stages. But his anticipation is decent, his legs are capable of eating up ground quickly, and he's got good reach. De Bakker tried to exploit Soderling's difficulty getting moving, as well as the trouble a man of his size has changing directions quickly, with the drop shot. The ploy was successful a number of times, but not enough to make much of a difference. This is a high-risk gambit. Soderling isn't really the guy you want in a position to shove the ball down your throat; not unless you also want to see it coming out the other end.

I had to smile when Soderling, down on serve at 15-30 and 3-all in the second set, powdered a forehand that landed so close to out that de Bakker, convinced it was long, immediately consulted Hawk-Eye. Soderling knew the ball was good; he felt it and trusted his instincts to such an extent that, despite the relative importance of the call (the difference between 30-all and break point), he didn't even bother to watch the reprise on the big screen.

Set 3: Soderling's limitations are intrinsically bound up with his strengths, which in real-world terms is called making the best of things. While his movement is ponderous, his stroking is rock-solid and smooth. There's an urge to grace latent in his game—you can see it in his ball toss, the way his tossing hand remains extended, palm and fingers gracefully posed, for a noticeably long time. And for a big man, he gets down to the ball when stretched wide with surprising agility and body control; one of his better shots on the day was the rolled, cross-court forehand, hit from way off the court and deep in his own corner. He made that shot repeatedly, and if de Bakker's reply wasn't a big blow down the line with his own forehand, Soderling was right back in the point.

It's common knowledge that Soderling has a fine inside-out forehand. But his iniside-out backhand is also superb. They say that the down-the-line backhand is the real money shot in tennis, so the ability to hit it inside-out, from well inside the sideline ascends almost to the level of an astounding parlor trick. There's a reason this guy has been winning consistently, even if he has struggled some this summer.

When Soderling was asked what surface he expected to be his best, at the onset of his career, he replied: "When I started, I had my best results on indoors and faster surfaces. But I think the last two years I played very good on all surfaces, especially on clay. So now I'm not sure anymore, which is a good thing because I feel I can really do well on any surface."

First and foremost, that's a testament to the advances Soderling has made in technique; for a man of his size and skill sets, the consistency and fluidity of his execution is remarkable.

So where is he going, long-term? He knows that he's the giant killer and occupies a unique niche. When a draw comes out these days, the first question of Federer and Nadal fans is apt to be: Where's Robin? Soderling is so accustomed to this that he finds it amusing. "Yeah, everybody has been telling me since the draw came out: I'm going against Roger in the quarters. But he still needs to win two more matches, and I have to win one more, so it's still far ahead. I'm the fifth seed, so I know I'm gonna play one of the four top guys in the quarters. They're all really good players, so it doesn't matter who I'm playing."

One of the noteworthy ironies in play here is that despite Soderling's Bunyanesque game and appearance, he seems a man capable of seeing all sides of an issue; he's a soft-spoken fellow with a cautious, ambivalent manner and traces of a lisp. I wondered, will he be content as the giant-killer? Does he yearn, as we might expect, to be a giant?

"Oh, I don't really care. I think Roger and Rafa, they're the two best players in the world right now. I think it will remain like that for a couple of years. But of course I want to improve. I want to do better. But it's also a matter of doing well in many matches, many tournaments in a row, not only ones here and there."

All anti-Christs ought to be so mellow.