Of the top 6 seeds, the 6th seed, Tomas Berdych looked most vulnerable.  Since losing in the finals of Wimbledon, he has had a subpar year.  He lost to Llodra in the opening round of the US Open (a bit of an unlucky draw as Llodra just barely missed getting seeded), in the quarters in Kuala Lumpur to Ferrer, in the opening round in Beijing, in the third round in Shanghai, in the opening round in Stockholm, in the opening round in Basel, and in the third round in Paris.

There are a handful of reasons Berdych may never reach the upper echelons of the game.  One, is his attitude.  He seems to lack the intensity of any player ranked ahead (or even behind him).  He’s as laid-back as a top ten player gets.  Two, is his strokes.  Berdych possesses perhaps the most effortless looking strokes of the top pros.  He seems to barely swing, and the ball comes flying.  One reason for this is how flat he hits.  When he goes for a shot, he is among the flattest hitters in the game.  I saw a slow-mo replay of a point where the ball was almost barely spinning.  Basically, no pro does that.  Not Rafa, not Roddick, nor Roger.  I suspect even Murray hits with a bit of spin always.

Because of this, and his height, he’s likely to net the ball a lot.  When his timing is on, he can hit the Roger duo, which is the inside in forehand up the ad sideline, and the inside out forehand about 3 feet from the baseline, hugging the deuce sideline.  Those two shots win him a lot of points.

But when he’s off, his shot tolerance is much lower than other players.  He’s more of a placement hitter than a pure power hitter.  In that respect, Soderling probably pounds the ball harder than Berdych.

This means, in a standard rally, you can almost wait for a mistake from Berdych.  When his shots aren’t falling, he looks terribly ordinary.

In the first set, Andy Roddick was winning a lot of the longer rallies because Berdych would try to hit a down-the-line shot and net it.  This was fortunate because one thing Berdych was doing well was returning Roddick’s serve.  Rafa could barely see the Roddick serve and this lead to fairly easy holds for Roddick.  Indeed, Rafa only had one break in the match, and that was in the third set.  It’s too bad for Andy that his one big weakness is return of serve (though he tried to attack Nadal–without much success).

Speaking of Andy–Roddick has trotted out two new ideas on his forehand.  The first is the high looper.  He’s been adding a semi-lob high topspin forehand to his repertoire as something of a changeup.  He’s also trying to be more aggressive with the forehand when he goes inside-out, trying to hit that harder as well.

The first set looked pretty even, but it seemed like Andy was in control.  At 5-4 up, Berdych was serving to even the match when he fell to 15-40.  Somehow, he managed to eke himself out of that and win the game, and then, he played a good game on Roddick’s serve, starting to paint the lines, and boom, set over, and Berdych has won, rather surprisingly.

In the second set, Berdych was beginning to feel his shots.  The shots that were hitting the net were now whizzing for winners.  Roddick was hitting more errors, too.  Early in the second set, in a rally that eventually had Roddick attack the net and lose the point, the signs flickered.  The entire wall surrounding the court is electronic and displays Barclay and South African Airline in a bluish glow.

The line judges sit in a small boxed area, and that boxed area has a sign about 2 feet high and was showing Lacoste.  Roddick noticed it flicker red, white, then back to the turquoise blue.  He made a mention of this to Mohamed Lahyani (remember him?  he was the umpire in Isner-Mahut).  Lahyani asked for the signs to be turned off.

But it disrupted Roddick just enough that he played another bad point and lost serve.  Roddick was upset because he thought the umpire overruled a ball and called it out.  Lahyani said he was merely reconfirming that the ball was out.

As Roddick hadn’t had a real whiff of breaking Berdych’s serve since getting set points in the first set, Roddick knew his chances were fading away.  Berdych then played another solid game late in the second set to engineer a second break and take the second set.  Final score: 7-5, 6-3.

The match looked, for all the world, to be in Roddick’s hands, except he wasn’t making a huge impression on Berdych’s serve and Berdych was doing a great job getting nearly every serve Roddick hit back.  It really swung when Berdych held serve 15-40 down and began to swing more freely and start dominating some points from the baseline, something he hadn’t been doing early in the first set where his lack of pure speed appeared to be hurting him.

This puts Roddick at 0-2 down.  I think that means he’s technically out. Hmm, maybe not.

Roddick has Djokovic to play next.  If he wins that, he would be 1-2.  Then, he would need Djokovic to lose to Rafa, so a loss to Roddick would make Djokovic 1-2 as well.  Then, he needs Rafa to beat Berdych so Rafa would be 3-0 and Berdych would be 1-2.  Then, he needs one of Djokovic or Berdych to have a straight set loss (for Djokovic, he would have to have both losses to be straight sets) and then he could get in by sets won.  Or it could come down to games won.

It’s an unlikely scenario.  Djokovic is playing well.  Certainly, he could lose to Rafa, but Rafa hasn’t quite shaken off the rust, so Djokovic has a decent shot of winning.  If Rafa’s rust is shaken off, it could get very interesting.  Berdych losing to Rafa would be the expected result, but then Roddick beating Djokovic would be a tall order.  Roddick has had success against Djokovic, but usually one of two things has to happen.  Either Djokovic would have to be playing indifferently and this happens a few times a year, or there would have to be heat, in which case, Djokovic’s vulnerability to heat would come into play.  Djokovic is playing well and it’s not hot in London, so it doesn’t look great for Roddick.

So far, there hasn’t been a great match.  Federer put on a clinic against Murray and Ferrer.  Soderling squeaked by one over Ferrer, but it wasn’t great tennis.  Nadal-Roddick was close for a while but you felt, at the end, Roddick just couldn’t keep up.  Djokovic had an easy win over Berdych and Berdych played pretty good, but not great against Roddick.  Right now, the best hope for a good match is Djokovic-Nadal scheduled for this afternoon (in the East Coast, early evening in London).