Last year, Soderling went to Chennai and promptly lost in the opening round to Robby Ginepri.  He went to the Australian Open and promptly lost the opening round to Marcel Granollers.  Fortunately, this blip in his record didn’t affect the rest of his year as he flitted with becoming number 4 in the world.

This year, Soderling changed his plans and chose to play in Brisbane, geographically much closer to Melbourne and hoped to change his fortunes.

And change it, he did.  First and foremost, he made the finals against defending champ, Andy Roddick.

This match resembled the match played between Federer and Davydenko some 12 hours earlier, with Soderling playing the role of Federer and Roddick playing the role of Davydenko.

Soderling may be a one-trick pony, but that’s some trick.  Few people hit their groundstrokes as consistently hard as Soderling.  Maybe del Potro, maybe Fernando Gonzalez, at least on his forehand, and that’s about it.  Federer works the angles, and it’s his ability to direct the ball and pick up balls from crazy spots, that gives Federer his advantage.  Soderling is a pure power hitter.  And it’s not that he hits one power shot, he can hit 3-4, sometimes 5 power shots in a row.

Meanwhile, as good as Roddick is, his game is generally a passive one.  He hits with enough power that he doesn’t get pushed around too much, but he doesn’t hit with enough power to put the ball away for winners.  That used to be his game, but he ended up making too many errors.  As Roddick matured, he must have felt there was no way for him to be like Soderling, pounding ball after ball until a weak shot arrived and then put that away.

Soderling has his weaknesses.  He’s not that great a net player.  He doesn’t handle the drop shot so well.  He doesn’t have much finesse in his game.  He does what he does, which is hit the ball hard, and he does that exceedingly well.

And that left Roddick feeling very much like Davydenko.  He was pressured on Soderling’s serve all the time because Soderling would take his power serve and then follow up with powerful groundies.  This made his service games very short.  Meanwhile Roddick was struggling to hold his own serves because if Robin got an edge in the point, he would often win it.

Soderling had plenty of chances to break Roddick, and had to work hard to escape many games with a hold.  However, he couldn’t do it enough.  Roddick hit a shot that clipped the edge on a 0-40 point.  Then, a Roddick drop shot that Soderling netted, and then a big serve.  Soderling still managed to break after some Roddick errors and then held easily.

There was some rain, and due to the roof structure at Brisbane, the rain could seep in from the cheap seats and apparently work its way to court.  This caused a delay which Roddick grumbled at.

In the post-match ceremony, organizers thanked Roddick for donating money to a local charity for every ace he served and he promised to double it if the audience would contribute $2 each.  He thanked the tournament chair who is stepping down after this year, and hoped to be invited back the following year.

Soderling said he came to the tournament 2 years ago, and really enjoyed the tournament this year.

Soderling is striking the ball awfully well and has to be considered a reasonable threat to go deep in the Australian Open.  He’s going to ride this one-trick pony as far as it will carry him.

Final score: 6-3, 7-5.