Estoril Open

Estoril Open is the most important tennis tournament in Portugal. It has been held since 1990 in Oeiras, my hometown (very close to Lisbon) and it has currently a prize money of 531,250 euros. It started by being only a men tournament, until 1998 when a women tournament started to take place also. Past winners include players like Emilio Sanchez, Thomas Muster, Carlos Moya, Juan Carlos Ferrero, David Nalbandian, Nikolay Davydenko or Gaston Gaudio.

David Nalbandian

This year the portuguese people had a little joy, after more than 10 years without seeing any portuguese player passing the first round: Frederico Gil, 253 ATP ranked, 21 years old, surprisingly beated Dmitry Tursunov (ranked ATP 33) in the second round, being the third portuguese player in history to reach the quarter-finals of Estoril Open (last was Nuno Marques in 1995).

Frederico Gil

For me, Estoril Open is important also. In one of the first years of the event, one of my first years doing tennis competition, I was lucky enough to follow a tennis course inside the grounds of the event, during the same days of the event. Was it by then that my passion for tennis was born? I can not remember, but it was certainly afterwards that I started to dream about one day making tennis my job. Destiny had something else prepared for me. However, whenever I go to Estoril Open these days, I dream again...