PARIS — Robin Soderling's big forehand didn't let him down Tuesday at the French Open, and it didn't let Nikolay Davydenko into the match.

The 24-year-old Swede advanced to the semifinals by following up his upset over Rafael Nadal with a 6-1, 6-3, 6-1 win over Nikolay Davydenko.

"I was a little bit lucky in the beginning," Soderling said. "I saved two break points in the first game and I broke him straightaway. So instead of maybe being down 2-0, I was up 2-0."

Soderling will play in his first major semifinal against 12th-seeded Fernando Gonzalez. On Sunday, he ended Nadal's perfect record at Roland Garros, beating the four-time defending champion in four sets.

At the start, it looked as if Soderling's huge win could have taken too much out of him. Serving to open the match against the 10th-seeded Davydenko, Soderling faced his only two break points. He saved them both, though, and went on the win five straight games — including taking 11 straight points from the third to fifth games.

"If I try to play well, he play much better," said Davydenko, a two-time French Open semifinalist who turned 28 on Tuesday. "But if I play not so good, what I can say? I didn't play good."

Soderling also had a break point in the first game of the second set, and three in the fifth, but Davydenko saved them all. At 3-3, however, the Russian committed four unforced errors to give Soderling the decisive break.

"The score looks easy, but I think it was a little bit tougher than the score was," said Soderling, who finished the match with 19 forehand winners from the baseline. "I knew that he was going to start playing better, and straight from the first point in the second set he actually started to play much better. So I always needed to tell myself to not lose concentration and to be on top of my game."

After breaking Davydenko two more times in the third set, Soderling served for the match and used two more big forehands to give him three match points. The Swede wasted the first with a forehand that went long, but then he hit his fourth ace of the match to end it.

The win over Davydenko makes it three straight — including a third-round victory over David Ferrer — against tough clay-court players.

"I didn't have a very easy draw," Soderling said. "I played three very good matches, so of course my confidence is getting better and better."

Like the match against Nadal, Soderling kept Davydenko running to all ends of the court throughout the match.

"He played faster," Davydenko said after dropping to 2-4 against Soderling. "It was very good control from baseline. Normally he never had this. ... I try (to) run, but I'm not Nadal."

Soderling has never won a title on clay. If he wins the title in Paris on Sunday, he would be the sixth man in the Open era to win his first clay-court tournament at the French Open.

"I don't want to be too happy, because I have another match coming up," Soderling said.