That’s the equation that faces men’s top seed Robin Soderling and Aussie qualifier Matt Ebden today. It’s an equation that both Soderling and Ebden will be hoping they’re able to solve.
While Ebden sits almost 200 spots behind world No.5 Soderling in the rankings, he does have one advantage – Soderling knows little about the 23-year-old West Australian.
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“I’m sure it’s going to be a tough match,” Soderling told reporters. “He had to come through qualifying and now he [has] won two matches, so he’s obviously playing really well.
Ebden, however, knows a bit more about Soderling. “Robin speaks for himself, he’s [number] five in the world [he’s made the] final of slams, beaten the best guys there are out there, so you know if there’s ever a time I need to test my skills it’s against a guy like that.”
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The two will no doubt get to know all about each other later today when they meet in the third match of the day session at Pat Rafter Arena.
In Friday’s first match, 2009 winner and 2010 finalist Radek Stepanek takes on German seventh seed Florian Mayer. The always dìfficult to play Stepanek most recently fried fourth seed Mardy Fish, while Mayer survived a tough three-set encounter with rising star Richard Berankis.
The second match of the day is the first of the men’s doubles semis between top seeds Max Mirnyi and Daniel Nestor, and Aussie Paul Hanley and Lukas Dlouhy.
In the night session, Andrea ‘Petkorazzi’ Petkovic will be hoping she has the right moves to get past women’s fourth seed Marion Bartoli. The dancing German has shown the kind of form this week that could take her to the top 10 by the end of the year, while Bartoli seems intent on repeating her 2009 Brisbane performance when she made it all the way to the final here.
The last match of the night pits fifth-seeded Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova against Czech Petra Kvitova in the second women’s semi. Pavlyuchenka defeated the talented Lucie Safarova in the quarters, while Kvitova was too classy for Slovakia’s Dominika Cibulkova.
So many questions but by the end of today, we’ll have the answers.
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