If you were a fair-weather tennis fan the last two years, someone who just watched the semis and finals of the Slams and maybe not even the Aussie Open, you might have thought of Soderling as a one-hit wonder.  Oh sure, he upset Nadal and reached the final, but what has he done since?  Clearly, such a person doesn’t watch tennis, because Soderling worked his way into the top ten and was in the final 8 at the end of 2009.

This year, Soderling replicated his result and reached the French finals again, this time, beating Roger Federer en route, and he was flirting with number 4 all year long.

This year, Soderling reached his first semifinals of a Masters 1000 event reaching the semis of Indian Wells and Miami, and with Paris, Soderling reached his first final and won his first Masters 1000.  One can just look at Ivan Ljubicic who had to wait most of a career to win his first Masters 1000 (in this year’s Indian Wells).

Both Soderling and Monfils had marathon matches, so it wasn’t clear that either could produce great tennis today.  And, even worse for Monfils, who was playing the Paris final again, a loss to Soderling last week in Valencia, and a lopsided loss.

Soderling came out very business-like taking control with his huge shots forcing Monfils on the defensive.  It didn’t help that Monfils barely got half his serves in.  Monfils was broken twice in the first set.

The second set was much closer.  Both held serve until the tiebreak, but again Monfils made errors and let Soderling take control of the tiebreak.

In the ceremony afterwards, Monfils thanked the crowd, and realized it was tough making the finals again, but not winning, but that he promised the crowd they would bring back the Davis Cup (against Serbia) in two weeks.

Soderling conducted his post-match speech in English given his lack of fluency in French.  He said he knew what it felt like to reach a big tournament final twice and lose (and he pointed out that it was in Paris as well).  He said he now has two favorite tournaments (Roland Garros and Paris).  He thanked his coach, trainer, and girlfriend as well as his family at home who he knew was watching on TV.

With this win, Soderling will become number 4 in the world just ahead of Andy Murray.  Murray had actually performed a bit better this year than last year in Paris, but the amount of points he picked up was far less than the 820 points Soderling picked up.  The two will be practically neck-in-neck with only the year-end ATP World Tour Finals left.  Soderling has more points to defend there as Murray lost in the round-robin (by the slimmest of margins, coming down to total number of games won, the third tiebreaker in selecting a semifinalist, and del Potro got in and made the finals while Murray went home) while Soderling reached the semis (losing to del Potro).

While the final didn’t live up to expectations, congratulations to the Swede for his first Masters title!