In between the Wisconsin protest coverage, Pale Rider and A Fistful of Dollars, I watched the ATP Marseille final, in which world #4 Robin Söderling came back from losing a close first set tiebreak to defeat world #21 Marin Čilić 6-7 (8-10), 6-3, 6-3. I know sportswriters try to vary the terminology, but I was surprised to read this headline in the UK Mirror:

Robin Söderling too smart for Čilić

With all due respect to Robin Söderling, being smart was not as important to his victory as regaining his composure after playing a loose first set. This Toronto Star Headline was much closer to what I saw:

Söderling fights off Čilić

Söderling is having a good year so far. He won an ATP 250 tournament in Brisbane, defended his title at the ATP 500 in Rotterdam and now has won at Open 13 Marseille, also an ATP 250 series event. But he only reached the fourth round of the Australian Open, the first major of the season. Söderling won 150 points and A$93,000 at the AO, and 250 points and €93,450 at Marseilles.

An ATP 500 winner gets 500 computer points, ATP 250 winner gets 250 points, etc. As the runner-up in an ATP 250, Marin Čilić got 150 points and €49,180. Soderling carries about 6,000 points, so he needs either to win dozens of small tournaments like this, or do better in the ATP 1000s and 2000 point majors, to ever catch #1 Rafael Nadal, who currently has over 12,000 points..

When I tuned in to a French feed, Čilić had already broken Söderling to take the first game and was holding serve comfortably. Söderling is 6'-4" tall with a scary serve, so losing serve was a bad sign. At 6'-6" himself, Čilić was serving a few aces and appeared to be dominating rallies on his own serve, but he wasn't able to return Söderling's serves well enough to even get into rallies. Despite the one break, Söderling was holding serve easily.

When it became clear that the women players were hitting harder, Mary Carillo coined the term, Big Babe Tennis. Men have been hitting hard for a long time, but recently there seem to be a lot of very tall men doing well on the tour, guys 6'-4" and up. It used to be that the agility of men nearer 6'-0" balanced out the power of the taller players, but in the last few years we have seen taller players like Söderling and 6'-6" Juan Martín del Potro occasionally marshal their big strokes and blast Federer or Nadal, both only 6'-1", right off the court - even at the majors. I'm wondering if we are seeing Big Boy Tennis.

I thought Čilić might eventually serve out the set, but Söderling broke him and then held to pull even at 4-4. I thought Čilić was done for, but he surprised me by holding serve to 6-6, then winning the tiebreak with some gritty play. Čilić had an early minibreak, which in French appears to be "minibreak", at about 4-2. but lost it. Both men had match points, but Čilić broke again at 8-8 and held his next service point.

That was the exciting part of the match. After the tiebreak, Söderling's service games were impenetrable, and he took enough chances on returns that he broke Čilić several more times, taking the next two sets 6-3, 6-3.

Marin Čilić told interviewers, "Je suis super content de ma semaine," so apparently he was super content with his week. I didn't know "super" was French, either. If I was Čilić I wouldn't be content until I figured out how to return that big serve.

Söderling looks in good form to make more noise at Roland Garros, where he has been runner-up the last two years, taking out Nadal, but losing to Federer in 2009 and doing the reverse in 2010.