Rui Machado

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Rui Machado (born April 10, 1984 in Faro, Algarve, Portugal) is a Portuguese professional male tennis player.

He reached a career high in singles of #242 on October 10, 2005.

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[edit] Career

[edit] 2005

Machado had the best year of his early career in 2005, reaching a career high #242 in October.

He began the year ranked #393 in singles. In the Portugal Satellite 1 in January and February, he won the first two week-long tournaments before faltering in the last two weeks, but it got his ranking to #330. He made little progress the next 4 months, mostly in Challenger qualifying, before finally qualifying into a Challenger in Germany to get his ranking to #301. He followed that up with two straight quarterfinal runs in Challengers in France and Italy, beating former top-60 players Alex Calatrava and Juan Antonio Marin, to get his ranking to #265 in July.

But he made little progress from then through October, although a couple first round Challenger match wins helped him get his career high ranking. He returned to the Futures level in November with good success, winning Spain F33 and reaching the finals of Spain F32 and F34 to finish the year ranked #259.

[edit] 2008

Machado began his comeback with a spectacular run on the Futures circuit early in 2008. After failing to qualify into Portugal F3 in late January, he went on to win his next 26 matches, losing just 2 sets along the way. He won Italy F1, qualified into and won Portugal F4, then won Portugal F5 an F6, both using Special Entry status. He finally lost a match two weeks later in the semifinal of Spain F12 to #264 Pere Riba, but got revenge the following week at Spain F13, beating Riba in the final, for his 5th Futures win in his last 6 tries. The string of victories took his ranking from #729 in February to #371 in early April.

Machado began April by helping Portugal to a 4-1 win in their Euro/African Zone - Group II Davis Cup match against Tunisia in Estoril, Portugal. The following week, just 10 weeks after having to play qualifiers to get into Futures tournaments in Portugal, he was given a Wild Card entry into Portugal's ATP stop in Estoril, and made great use of it, defeating #22 Ivo Karlovic in the first round in his first-ever ATP-level match.

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