Today was undoubtly the best day of the tournament thus far as far as I'm concerned. I'll skip the preview and talk straight about the matches, they were all quite interesting.

Kohlschreiber d Nieminen 6-2 4-6 6-3

I only got there when Niemi was 5-2 down, so I don't quite know what happened in the first set. Nieminen's forehand was not working throughout the entire match, his serve wasn't brilliant either, and his backhand was the only thing that really worked for him. His backhand down the line is awesome.

Philip was playing great - I was already impressed by him at his first match in which he defeated Luczak, but today he raised the bar even higher. In his first service game of the third set he served three straight aces and was mostly un-interrupted in his service games. Nieminen didn't go up a gear like in his match against Roitmann, and was simply second best. The German also has a great personality - I'm really getting to like him.

Calleri d Massu 6-2 7-6 (4)

I missed the Verdaso/Mirnyi match which I really wanted to see, but I was also looking forward to this match quite alot. The two play doubles together and look like good mates, even smiling at each other during the warm-up.

This was mostly a high-quality match. The Massu forehand is really big and impressive, but Calleri is simply overwhelming. During the first set Massu was playing pretty well, but the Argentine was just amazing. He's not the fastest guy around, but he makes up for that with HUGE groundstrokes. Some forehands drew some mighty gasps from the crowd. The second set was amazingly intense emotionally for both guys. I knew el Vampiro was crazy, but Calleri got quite angry as well. Should the match have gone to a third, I think Massu would have triumphed.

At some stage of the match, after plenty of wearing in Spanish and racket abuse from el Vampiro, a fan yelled something in Spanish and giggled with his friends. I don't think he knew what he was saying. Massu went CRAZY, looking at that fan like he wanted to drink his blood and complaining for long minutes to the umpire (whose name I don't remember, but he's quite a famous one). Either way, Calleri deserved to win and I'm glad he did.

Melzer d Pavel 7-5 6-3

I already stated my love to Pavel's game, but Melzer was playing out of his mind again. Hitting -shot winners off first service returns, blasting some amazing backhands down the line and especielly firing on all cylinders on his serve, which is huge. Nothing much to say - Melzer was just great, and Pavel is not strong enough to deal with him on clay when he's playing like that. The local hero is starting to look like he has a real shot at the title - he's so strong mentally this week!

Gaudio d Gremelmayr 6-7 (1) 7-6 (7) 6-0

Tennis exists for hunderds of years and will live on until the dawn of days due to Gaudio versus Gremelmayr, third round of the Kitzbuehel tournamnt in the year two thousand and six.

This was the greatest match I witnessed in person in my life. Nothing comes close. I feared Gaston would lose to this German no-name as he's really sucking this season, and the German came out firing. Gaudio actually took a 5-2 first set lead, but blew it and played a horrible tie-break. He had patches of brilliance - his backhand is a shot of brilliance. If Pavel is an artist of the game, Gaudio is a philosopher.

After he lost the first set, I feared he would tank the second. He was down 6-7 1-2 0-40 on his serve and things were looking bad when he ripped his pony-tail holder (he cut his hair quite a bit shorter, by the way), tossed his hat and also recieved a code violation for ball abuse late in the first set. But Gaudio stunned me by winning the game. After this game, though, it all went down-hill. Gaudio was broken and found himself 2-5 down. He held serve to 5-3 after being 15-30 down, and then came the biggest game of the match. Gaston saved two match points in an amazing fashion (some extreme moon-balls coupled with huge backhands), and the experience-less Gremelmayr fell for it. The German's gameplan all throughout the match was to hit the living daylight out of the ball and mix it up with -shots when Gaudio is too far back, but as so often happens, he didn't have the balls to go for it on the match points.

So Gaston won the huge game at 5-3 to go 4-5 down. I was absoloutly going crazy at that point. I don't usually make much noise by myself, but I was screaming like a mad man and wanted to die on the match points. Gaston took me through a roller-coaster of emotions, a thing which only he, Federer and Safin are capeble of doing, and once upon a time also Capriati.

The game at 4-5 was another big one, with Gaston having to fight off some vicious aggressive play by the German who was still trying to use the tactic which got him so far - hitting the shit out of the ball. Gremelmayr then held serve to go 5-6 up. Gaston won ANOTHER long game to get the match into a tie-breaker, but swiftly found himself 1-3 and then 4-2 down. I was still going bananas - people around laughed at me and whispered things to each other in German, but I absoloutly didn't care. Gaston made a huge come-back playing really well (this time the forehand helped as well), and had a set point at 5-6, which he lost with a missed -shot. he then had another match point at 7-6 and another one at 7-8, which he finally won. This was an amazing set.

The crowd was mostly pro-Gremelmayr (a German, of course), but the loudest fans were for Gaudio, and that included me. I was so happy when Gaudio took the second. The third was a walk in the park - Gremelmayr kept hitting the ball really hard, but hit the back-fence a couple of time. A shot he hit from the baseline landed in his own service box and Gaudio even attempted a hot-dog lob which almost landed in, much to the amusement of the crowd. Gaudio sealed the match when another Gremelmayr backhand went long, and as for me, I don't care about the reminder of the tournament - I've experienced a tennis-orgasm that goes right up there with Federer's Wimbledon 2006 win, Capriati's French win in 2001 and the Australian of 2002, Philippoussis' win in the Davis Cup final of 2003 over Ferrero and Sampras' last US Open triumph.

This is why I'm a tennis fan! Vamos Argentina, Vamos Gaudio!!!