TheSportsCampus

World no. 9 Robin Soderling, a last minute substitute for American Andy Roddick at the ATP World Tour Finals, made a huge statement of intent at the ATP World Tour Finals at the O2 Arena in London on Monday. The Super Swede who has had a breakthrough 2009 took just 98 minutes to prove that his win over Rafael Nadal at the French Open in May was no flash in the pan, neither was he here at this year end extravaganza to merely make up the numbers. Soderling staked a claim for the crown and all but ended Nadal's slim hopes of finishing the year as the world no.1 with a straight sets 6-4, 6-4 win.

Soderling hit the courts firing bullets, keeping the points short and choosing to stay as far away from a long rally as h umanly possible. The strategy worked wonders as he broke early and raced to a 3-0 lead. Nadal responded in a fashion you would expect of a world champion and clawed his way back to 3-3. Games went on serve till the 10th game when a nervy Nadal made some rather uncharacteristic unforced errors to gift a grateful Soderling the opening set.

The second set was an amazing replica of the first with the pair trading early breaks before Soderling broke the Nadal serve once again in the 10th game with Nadal once again committing an unforced error - a miss-hit backhand - handing the contest to the Swede on his second matchpoint.

The evening match in Group B saw Novak Djokovic take on Nikolay Davydenko in the last of the first set of matches in the tournament. With a fantastic rivalry tied 2-2 between the Serb and the Russian, no one expected this battle of the baseliners to be even remotely pretty. The pair traded powerful groundstrokes from the back of the court for the first 30 minutes before Davydenko drew first blood breaking serve in the 5th game to inch ahead 3-2.

Despite a poor serving display in the opening set where he landed just 42% of his first serves, Davydenko saved the two break points that Djokovic earned, and promptly took his second chance of the match to break Djokovic a second time to wrap up the set 6-3.

The second set was just as exciting, with Djokovic clawing his way back into the contest by swinging hard at Davydenko's second serve. His effort finally bore fruition in the 9th game when some good play from Djokovic coupled with a touch of nerves from Nikolay enabled the world no.3 to break serve for the first time in the match. Another tight game followed as Djokovic was far from his best today, but his new found ability to stay calm in tough situation helped him to hang on to close out the set.

Djokovic carried his momentum into the third set, going up an early break and holding his advantage right through to the 10th game when the match was on his racquet to serve out. The possibility of losing appeared to not agree with the gifted Russian as he played an outstanding game to get back on level terms at 5-5. Sadly the sublime was followed by the ridiculous as Davydenko failed to hold serve giving Novak a second bite at serving out the match, one that the young Serb was glad to accept.

A 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 win in 2 hours and 47 minutes drew a standing ovation from a capacity crowd for both players. However to the victor go the spoils with Novak drawing Soderling in the next match with both players knowing a win would put them through to the last 4. A tough result for last year's losing finalist, Davydenko, he gets Nadal next with both players needing a win to stay alive in this competition.

Group B doubles action produced a couple of shock results today as pre-tournament favourites the Bryan twins and French & US Open champions Lukas Dlouhy and Leander Paes both lost their opening matches to less fancied opponents. These results means that atleast one if not both of these two veteran teams is heading home at the end of the round-robin stage of the competition.

Second seeds Bob and Mike Bryan were stunned 6-4, 6-4 by the no.7 seeds Andy Ram and Max Mirnyi, while 4th seeds Paes and Dlouhy dropped the first set of their match against Lukasz Kubot and Oliver Marach, 6-4, and were made to rue not taking any of their four break point opportunities in the second as the Austrian-Polish pair played a near perfect tiebreak to come away with an equally unexpected win.

The doubles event of the ATP Tour Finals has especially been thrown wide open with 3 of the top 4 pairs losing their opening round matches. Top seeds Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic will be hoping to get back to winning ways when they take on Frantisek Cermak and Michal Mertinak in the third feature match on Tuesday.

The match is however likely to get overshadowed by tomorrow's main event as home favourite Andy Murray takes on world no.1 Roger Federer in what could well be a preview of Sunday's final.

Monday Scores:

Group B Singles
R Soderling d R Nadal 64 64
N Djokovic vs. N Davydenko 36 64 75

Group B Doubles
M Mirnyi / A Ram d B Bryan / M Bryan 64 64
L Kubot / O Marach d L Dlouhy / L Paes 64 76 (3)

Order of Play Tuesday, 24 November

M Bhuapthi / M Knowles vs. M Fyrstenberg / M Matkowski
JM del Potro vs. F Verdasco
D Nestor / N Zimonjic vs. F Cermak / M Mertinak
R Federer vs. A Murray

File Photograph: Italian Open (Constantini)