Tiger watches Federer win

A few days ago, Roger Federer went to watch Tiger Woods practice playing golf. Today Tiger returned the call so to speak and was on hand to watch his fellow-dominant-athlete win his opening match to advance to the third round at the Miami AMS Sony Ericsson Open at Key Biscayne, Florida.

Tiger had some waiting to do though because the match, which was originally scheduled to start at 8pm, was delayed for more than two hours due to inclement weather. Federer had actually phoned Tiger to warn him that it was raining at Key Biscayne but apparently a very gracious Woods made the 15-mile trip just the same. Of this Federer says

He told me since a couple of months he's going to come out because I knew so far in advance when I was going to play. So that was a great thing. I think we should do that more in the future... I'm happy he comes out during a tournament. ... it's great that he comes to watch tennis. I think it's a great honor for our sport.

Like us faithful Federer fans, Tiger was not likely disappointed when the Swiss tennis star overcame the difficult windy conditions and produced answers to every query his opponent, American Sam Querrey, put to him (sorry for the pun). In fact, the match just took a little over 62 minutes--which was the time it took Kuznetsova and Bondarenko to complete their first set alone, by the way--probably giving Tiger time to travel back to Doral and get enough rest before he tees off for the fourth round at the WGC-CA Championship.

Federer himself was quite pleased with his performance, saying:

I was feeling terrible a couple of days ago, so I'm just happy I came through, you know, because I didn't know what to expect tonight. I didn't know my opponent. You know, I've known since a long time when I'm going to play. So kind of a bit of expectations, too, from the fans and everybody. ... I thought it was going to be a bit more difficult with the weather and the opponent ... but I came through and played well and pretty solid.