Robin Soderling has a peculiar kind of game.  The rangy Swede doesn’t have a lot of variety in his game.  He hits some of the hardest shots in the game.  He doesn’t play the ball to conventional spots on the court.  He’s got a huge serve.  He’s not fast, but he’s not exactly slow.  If you can move him around some, you can take advantage of his lack of blazing speed, but you have to be able to manage his power.

Because he hits so hard, Soderling tends to go pretty deep in tournaments.  He doesn’t lose very early because the threat of his power is often too much to overcome.

However, Federer has the kind of speed and power to keep up with Soderling and when Federer is on, he can make a player the caliber of Soderling look like a junior freshly turned pro.  Today was one of those days.  Roger Federer began the match pressuring Soderling on his serve.  Federer was able to get a break early on and never look back, and rush to a 6-1, 6-1 thrashing, all the more impressive considering Federer is number 3 in the world and Soderling is ranked only 2 spots back at 5.

Andy Murray also had an easy day.  Tsonga has played very little tennis since Wimbledon and Murray took advantage of that with a 2 and 2 win.  Djokovic also had a comfortable win over Garcia-Lopez 2 and 3.

The only upset of the day came against Jurgen Melzer who just toppled Nadal.  He lost in 3 sets to Argentine Juan Monaco.

The semis will feature Andy Murray against Juan Monaco and Roger Federer hoping to get a win over Djokovic, the man who eliminated him in the semis of the US Open.