Former world No.1 Roger Federer admitted he felt the mighty weight of expectation as he returned to the ATP Rotterdam Open on Wednesday seven years after last playing the indoor event.

The Swiss walked away in 2005 with the title and marked his return with a 6-4, 6-4 win over French world No.83 Nicolas Mahut on Wednesday.

But the 67-minute victory was far from routine, with the top seed admitting that he had little choice but to win convincingly in front of a sold-out-record crowd of more than 9,900, a figure which surpassed the 2011 final won by Robin Soderling.

The 16-time Grand Slam champion, who played the Rotterdam qualifiers as a teenager in 1999 and reached the quarterfinals, will face Finn Jarkko Nieminen in the quarterfinals after his second-round opponent Mikhail Youzhny had to withdraw with injury.