Wednesday at Monte-Carlo Country Club

As they told me, I was at the opening of the tickets desk, to try to buy one for the Central court, because it was a very nice scheduled as Federer, Nadal and Davydenko were playing ! I got one with ease as there were more than 100 tickets resold.

Between 9 and 10, players were practicing before matches start. I saw Kiefer, Del Potro, Santoro, Nadal, Andreev and Federer getting warm for their matches. It was funny because Andreev and Federer were practicing together and it is the only two players that have beaten Nadal on Clay since 2005.

On the first match on Central Court, World N°4, and recent Estoril Open finalist Nikolai Davydenko was taking on Italian Simone Bolleli who qualified. It was with no real trouble that Davydenko won the match 6-2 7-6.

Then Roger Federer was up against another qualifier Spaniard Rubens Ramirez-Hidalgo. Federer won his first title o the season last Sunday in Estoril in some different conditions. He still won the first set very comfortably 6-1, and then his opponent was starting to play better and better and took the second set 6-3. He kept his momentum going as Federer was getting frustrated, and went 2 breaks up in the third set to lead 5-1. Then Roger had all the public behind him and won 5 games in a row to level the match and took the 3rd set into a deciding breaker. With no problems he won this one 7 points to 1.

It was a scary first match for him and all of his fans and everybody was very happy to see him come through.

It was Nadal's turn to go on Central Court to begin his Clay court season and his campaign to a four consecutive Monte-Carlo crown and a dreaming 4th Grand Slam title in Roland Garros. Mario Ancic was his opponent today, and had absolutely no answer to beat the King of Clay as He lost in straight sets 6-0 6-3.

It was the same story for the World N°8 and French Number 1 Richard Gasquet facing Kristof Vliegen from Belgium. He won 6-1 6-2 without long rallies.

In the other matches of day 3 seeds lost, 2 of them had to retire, N°8 Youzhny (neck) and N°11 Juan Monaco (right hand). The third one was the 15th seed Ivo Karlovic against Frenchman Gael Monfils. Monfils won in straight sets 7-6 6-1, and it was the first of 225 career match of Karlovic that he didn't record an ace at all.

In the evening I went to a bar to watch to football game between Barcelona and Manchester United. Result 0-0.