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2/22/08 6:07 AM | Ricky Dimon
Andreas Seppi and Robin Söderling will meet head-to-head for the first time on Friday night in the Rotterdam quarterfinals. It’s a pairing few could have expected considering Rafael Nadal, Lleyton Hewitt, and Marcos Baghdatis were all in that quarter of the draw at the beginning.
While Söderling sent Baghdatis home after a three-set battle in the first round, Seppi dispatched both Hewitt and Nadal in even more dramatic fashion. The Italian saved one match point before taking out Hewitt in a third-set tiebreaker, then recovered from being a set down against Nadal to stun the top seed 6-4 in the third.
Seppi’s surprising results in Rotterdam have not come completely out of nowhere. In fact, he is playing the best tennis of his life at the moment. The 24-year-old (he celebrated his birthday on Thursday with the win over Nadal) reached a career-high ranking of No. 40 just last week and now he stands at 42nd in the world. Early-season highlights in 2008 include a win over eventual Australian Open runner-up Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in Adelaide and a Challenger title in Bergamo, Italy that featured victories over Teimuraz Gabashvili (already a quarterfinalist here in Rotterdam), Fabrice Santoro, and Julien Benneteau. Seppi also advanced one round at the Australian Open before losing in a fourth-set tiebreaker to Mikhail Youzhny.
Söderling has not had the benefit of playing as much tennis as his opponent this season due to a wrist injury kept him out of tennis from last August until last week’s Open 13 in Marseille. Despite that, if Seppi is hot right now, Söderling is simply on fire. The Swede upset Jarkko Nieminen and second-seeded Richard Gasquet at the Open 13 before falling to eventual runner-up Mario Ancic in the final. After taking out Baghdatis in the first round in Rotterdam, Söderling enjoyed the most dominant performance of his comeback on Thursday against Fernando Verdasco. He crushed the Spaniard 6-4, 6-1 in just one hour and nine minutes.
Seppi, of course, has been extremely impressive this week in coming back from the dead against Hewitt and then dominating Nadal from the baseline in the last two sets of that match. Nonetheless, those two victories came of players who either have no real big weapons (Hewitt), or weapons that are depleted on hard courts (Nadal). Söderling, however, owns a huge serve-and-forehand combination that can be lethal on the indoor hard courts of Rotterdam. If the Swede is serving well, Seppi will be dealing with something he did not see in his matches against Hewitt and Nadal. Getting a lot of looks at second serves, however, would allow Seppi to work his way into baseline rallies. If the win over Nadal is indication, that would be a scary proposition for Söderling.
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sstay, Sep 8, 2008 9:32 AM
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Did you know that... Thomas Johansson did not have to face any of the top-10 players when he won the Australian Open in 2002.
sstay, Sep 8, 2008 9:32 AM
mara2, Sep 8, 2008 7:00 AM
RafaNadalGirl20, Sep 8, 2008 6:50 AM
BernieEliza, Sep 8, 2008 5:47 AM
BernieEliza, Sep 8, 2008 5:42 AM
kaitepai, Sep 8, 2008 6:04 AM
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