Nobody wins big anymore if he isn't willing to pull the trigger when an opportunity presents itself.

 Nobody wins big anymore if he isn't willing to pull the trigger when an opportunity presents itself. 

And only Nadal has the kind of skills that enable him to be not just a Federer tormentor, but a reverse-mirror image of his rival. Only Nadal can do what Federer does on offense from a defensive and sometimes seemingly hopeless position. Apart from Nadal, the players most likely to succeed these days are those trigger-pullers—the Novak Djokovics, Robin Soderlings, Tomas Berdychs and Juan Martin del Potros. Throw Fernando Verdasco, flaws and all, in there, too.

Andy Murray and Andy Roddick are borderline characters in this scenario, because Murray gravitates more to a Nadal-esque sensibility (his best offense flows from his superb defense), and his problem may be put pretty simply—he's not Nadal. Roddick is by nature a trigger-puller, but his groundstroke skills are not on par with his serving abilities. This may make his life a little more difficult in a few hours, when he plays Soderling, the player who most consistently represents the lessons learned in the era of Federer.

Soderling knows that it's all about finishing, and that's a wonderful lesson to grasp. He won his first two clashes with Roddick, one on hard court and one on the surface on which Soderling is especially dangerous, carpet. (How a guy can end up with indoor carpet and outdoor clay as his two best surfaces is a bit byeond me.) Last year, Roddick exacted revenge in two outdoor hard-court meetings before Soderling nosed ahead 3-2 by bamboozling Roddick on the indoor hard court in Paris this fall.