Federer Wins Semi, Facing Soderling in Finals

After an intense semifinal round, Switzerland’s, Roger Federer, beat Argentina’s, Juan Martin del Potro, to advance to the 2009 French Open finals.  As you can tell from the image below, Federer was pretty excited.

image: TSN

While many might have guessed that the Swiss tennis star would advance to the next round (he has been a runner-up at this even three times) his opponent, 23rd-seeded, Robin Soderling (Sweden), was a bit of a surprise.  In what some are calling his “Cinderella run,” he upset 12th-seeded Chilean, Fernando Gonzalez, 6-3, 7-5, 5-7, 4-6, 6-4.  This is Soderling’s first-ever major semi.

I honestly don’t know who I’d like to see win since, in both situations, we’ve got a pretty great story.  Soderling is the ultimate underdog and who doesn’t like to see someone rise up from obscurity and beat all of the big names?  At the same time, if Federer wins, he will “become the sixth man in history to win all four Grand Slam events, tying Pete Sampras for the all-time men’s record in Grand Slam titles” (14).

The finals take place on Sunday.  If history repeats itself, Federer will take the title since he has beat Soderling in all nine of the times they’ve battled but Soderling is having an unusually charmed tournament so it is really anyone’s game.  The winner gets to take home $1.485 million and become a first-time French Open champ.