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By Mike Dickson
Getting your hands dirty: But Nadal rarely looked troubled in crushing Robin Soderling in straight setsAfter a tearstained French Open triumph Rafael Nadal heads to London today by Eurostar in a very different mood compared with how he left there last November.
Back then, he looked broken, humbled by three defeats in the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals at the O2 Arena with his knees aching and the future uncertain.
This time he’s heading for the AEGON Championships reinstated as not only the French Open champion but the world No 1 to boot.
The transformation was sealed yesterday with a 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 victory in the final at Roland Garros over Robin Soderling, the Swedish wood chopper who had caused him such grief 12 months previously by knocking him out of the fourth round.
The extent of that hurt, and the subsequent anxiety, was made apparent when the Spaniard fell to the ground not long after the moment of victory and sobbed uncontrollably, explaining shortly afterwards that this was ‘one of the most emotional moments of my career’.
As he prepares to step onto a grass court for the first time in two years after missing his Wimbledon title defence, he can reflect on the remarkable turnaround that led to this disappointingly one-sided final.
‘I was very nervous through the tournament,’ admitted Nadal, who will practise at West London’s Queen’s Club this afternoon.
Biting back: Rafael Nadal has restored his World No. 1 status‘Last year was very difficult and I had to retire during the Australian Open. Everybody has doubts about themselves and I am no exception. This was very important.’
Nadal’s superiority has been restored to such a degree that not only did he win Roland Garros without dropping a set — the same as in 2008 — he only lost two sets altogether in winning four clay court titles going back to the Monte Carlo Masters in April.
Latvia’s Ernests Gulbis and Spaniard Nicolas Almagro have the distinction of depriving him of an unblemished record in a run that has entirely justified his precautionary regime of playing a little less and dropping a bit of weight.
The result is that he is within one of Bjorn Borg’s tally of six French Open titles and that he has supplanted Roger Federer at the top of rankings.
Federer returns to action at the ATP Tour event in the German town of Halle this week while Nadal treads the turf in Fulham, where he could meet Andy Murray in the semi-finals.
Eyes on the prize: Spain's Rafael Nadal Going straight to London is his preferred way of warming up for Wimbledon, which was denied to him 12 months ago but worked a treat in 2008. Soderling is the only man to have beaten Nadal at Roland Garros and it would have been thought that his experience of tackling Federer in the French final of 2009 might have helped him yesterday.
He has only improved since, and he got off to a decent start against an initially edgy Nadal, who with his forehand going awry was forced to save break point in the fourth game.
Soderling applies about as much force to hitting a tennis ball as it is possible for a human being to muster, but he came up against the same problem everybody finds against Nadal, on clay especially.
Friendly foes Rafael Nadal and Robin Soderling His defence at the back of the court is so magnificent that anyone trying to drive it past him can only allow themselves the smallest margin for error, and the count of unforced mistakes quickly began to mount.
Despite Nadal serving formidably throughout, Soderling manufactured two break points in the eighth game, and threatened his opponent’s serve again at the start of the second.
Yet too often he missed his attempted winners, often striking the ball into the tramlines. A final backhand into the net brought everything to an end just after the two-and-a-quarter-hour mark.
The crowd had been willing him to get back in the match but it was a forlorn request.
British No 2 Alex Bogdanovic yesterday qualified for the main draw of this week’s AEGON Championships at Queen’s Club when he beat Serbia’s Ilia Bozoljac 4-6, 7-6, 6-4 in the final preliminary round. Laura Robson qualified for the women’s AEGON Classic when her final preliminary opponent Vitalia Diatchenko retired at 6-3, 4-0 down.
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