Robin Soderling defeated Andy Roddick 6-3, 7-5 to win Brisbane International, his seventh career title. With this victory, Soderling is back to his career-high mark of No. 4 in the South African Airways 2011 ATP Rankings.
“I’m playing really well and it makes me really happy," declared Soderling. "I’ve never really played well in Australia before and now finally I won a tournament playing really good tennis. It gives me a lot of confidence for Melbourne.
"I’ve had the best possible preparation I could have with five good matches here, now I’ll have a week of rest and practice in Melbourne and I’ll be more than ready to go. I know I have a chance to do really well if I play good tennis like here.”
Soderling did not face a break point in the match and won 35 of 39 first serve points.
“I think I served really well and I played really well again," said Soderling. "The last two matches have been my best ones in this tournament. Today the conditions were a little tougher than the other days, it was a bit windy and the rain came on the court a little bit, but I think it was a great match."
Roddick, who hit 12 aces in the final and 54 during the tournament, announced after the match that he would double the $100 he previously pledged for each ace hit to benefit Queensland flood relief efforts. Roddick will donate $10,800 to flood victims.
“He served great. Conditions were heavy and he served through it better," admitted Roddick. "I think that was the difference; I wasn’t able to get into any return games and he got into two and was able to break in those.
“I don’t think the conditions will be similar to this in Melbourne. But all you can ask for is getting in five good matches, that’s what you want after a lay-off. It didn’t go my way today, but overall I feel like I should be prepared for Melbourne.
"I felt like I hit the ball well this week, I returned pretty well. I think I could serve a little better, but if there’s one thing that I don’t worry about as much as the rest when it’s not going well it’s my serve. I feel comfortable and feel like I got what I needed out of this week.”
In the doubles final, Lukas Dlouhy and Paul Hanley won their first ATP World Tour doubles title after Lindstedt was forced to retire with a left calf injury. dloughy and Hanley won the first set 6-4 against fourth seeds Robert Lindstedt and Horia Tecau.
“Obviously it’s a little disappointing to win the final like we did,” lamented Hanley. “But we played really well I think in all our matches. Sometimes you don’t have to play your best tennis to win the tournament and that’s what happened obviously today. But we played some great tennis before today’s final and there are a lot of good things that we can look back on.
“It’s tough too sometimes. We struggled early, we saw he was struggling out there and that can be sometimes mentally a little bit frustrating. But we did really well, concentrated hard and once we got our momentum going we really kept it up and got that first set.”
(via ATP World Tour, photo/Reuters Pictures)
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