Robin Soderling has come to the end of the road in Australian Open 2011. He could not carry the winning game of the fourth set into the decider. The problem with Soderling was similar. Once Dolgopolov sorted out Soderling’s game and started keeping the ball in play, Soderling took a long time to adjust to the situation. The first set took only 21 minutes for the seven games, but once Dolgopolov started simply blocking Soderling’s booming serves, games started getting longer. Dolgopolov was putting only one third of his first serves in the first set or so. He was doing all the running on his second serve and hitting heavy balls of Soderling out. Things started changing in the middle of the second set. Crowd got into the match in his favour. As he was drawing more and more of crowds cheers, Soderling was losing the plot in a sure and steady way. His weaknesses were getting exposed. His movements were looking sluggish and he was caught on the wrong foot many a time. But he steadied himself in the fourth set and broke in the very first game. He took the set 6-4 hitting heavy. The decider saw change of momentum. Dolgopolov got into his gear and Soderling started committing errors. The final score line was 1-6, 6-3, 6-1, 4-6, 6-2. Dolgopolov has lived up to his billing as a dangerous floater.
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