Wednesday at The Estoril Open

I started my day well rested at 10. I decided to visit the city and walk around some nice places. So I went to the Restauradores, Marques de Pombal, Rato, the docks at Alcantara, the bridge of the 25th of April and Belem once again ! I was a very sunny morning and I enjoyed it very much.

I arrive for lunch at the Estoril Open and have a nice meal before watching the match between Frenchman Florent Serra and a fan favourite Rui Machado. The match started well for the Frenchman as he took an early double break advantage leading 4-0 then 5-1. Then he had some trouble to closed out the set as he got broke 2 times and machado levelled the set a 6-6 to try his best in the tie-break but Serra did as he did in the set having a 4-0 lead and then they were tied a 5-5 before Serra wins it 7-5.

After this first set, I had the information that Federer was practicing on an outside court so I went to see him practice instead of watching the end of the match which Serra won 7-6 6-1.

The practice session of Federer was very impressive to watch as we are very close to him and seeing him hit the ball is amazing. He was practicing a lot on his backhand when returning serves, and seemed pretty frustrated with it as he doesn't feel great to hit the ball when returning serve on his backhand. He prefer to play a nice and low slice, he is more comfortable with it.

Then when he got off the court I managed to get my tickets signed.

After that entertaining moment I went back to the central court to see the match between the N°2 seed and World N°4 Nikolay Davydenko against Czech Ivo Minar.

Davydenko had some early trouble against his opponent losing the first set 6-2. Then he kind of waked up hitting the line and having and incredible precision to eventually win the match 2-6 6-2 6-4.

In the other match of the day, Frenchman N°5 seed was forced to retire against Flavio Cipppola, and the N°7 seed Marc Gicquel beat his fellow French countryman Thierry Ascione in straight sets 7-6 6-3.