Tuesday 7^th July 2015

The rain has continued on and off over the last 24 hours here in Edinburgh and unfortunately the results for Toby have been as grim as the weather!

Due to the heavy rain overnight we knew that play would be delayed this morning but when we arrived at the tennis centre at 10am we were very surprised to see that none of the first round matches were even close to going on. The rain had completely saturated the clay courts and even though the ground staff had been working on them since 7am we were told that there wouldn’t be any play on them until at least 11.30am. That meant that the indoor courts were again being used by the Tennis Europe event and our scheduled indoor practice court of 11am had been cancelled!

That left us with two options; either we didn’t hit before Toby’s doubles match or we trekked across Edinburgh to one of the parks and try and get on a court there. Well there was no way we weren’t going to practice before his match so we got back on the bus and then walked for 15-20minutes across Meadow Park before we came to 16 pretty good hard courts:

It was really good to see at least half of the courts being used including 2 courts which had a kids coaching camp on them. I know the LTA are very keen to grow tennis in the Parks and if we can get more facilities like the one in Meadow Park then I think we’ve got a chance of getting children interested in playing from a young age.

Toby and I warmed up from 11.15 – 11.45am and then hit for 45 minutes where we went through a standard warm-up plus a few specific drills to get Toby prepared for his doubles match. Being in a Park it was very windy and I was taking the brunt of it from my end but at least we managed to get some good time in on court which was probably a lot more than a lot of the players at the centre that took the option of not training before their matches. While we were training we noticed some of the foreign U14 Tennis Europe players had made their way to the park and it did dawn on me that often it’s the foreign players that seem to go the extra mile in terms of time on court, extra sessions in the gym etc. during tournaments whereas often it’s the Brits that take the easy option. Hopefully that mentality can be changed and the coaches can guide the players to train like the professionals would so that we can produce more world class players in the future.

After getting some lunch we headed back to the centre at about 1.30pm and then had to enter into the lottery of would it rain and we’d be indoors or would the rain hold off and we could get on the clay? Eventually the rain came down too heavily and it was decided that all play would go indoors for the rest of the day. That meant that we had 2 different age groups with 2 events in each age group (singles and doubles) to get completed on 6 indoor courts!

Luckily Toby’s doubles with Andrew Rozanov against top seeds Vincent Gillespie and Calum McGeoch was the first ITF doubles match on the schedule so they ended up going on at 5pm (some matches didn’t go on until closer to 9pm!).

We knew from the outset that Vincent and Calum were going to be a tough pair to play; Vincent had played in the Qualifying of Junior Wimbledon last week and they are both good doubles players but I don’t think Toby or Andrew were quite prepared for the level that their opponents brought to the match!

After Calum held serve in the opening game, Andrew had game points on his serve in the next game but unfortunately the boys lost it to a sudden death deuce point. From there Vincent and Calum raced through the first set 6-0 in 19 minutes and even though Toby held serve at the start of the second set it wasn’t enough to stop their opponents flying through the match 6-0, 6-1 – at least it helped Gill and her team out with the scheduling by being on and off court quickly!

There’s never any shame in losing to a better team and as much as no player likes to take a heavy loss it happens at all levels of tennis – even at Grand Slams. The important thing is to always learn from the matches and take away specific points to work on which I know we definitely did.

The loss in the doubles brings our week in Edinburgh to a close; we’ll head back to London tomorrow and start our preparations for Queenswood which starts on my Birthday this Sunday!

Monday 6^th July 2015

It wasn’t the result we’d been hoping for today as Toby lost in the first round of the singles to one of the new kids on the block; Jack Draper.

As Toby wasn’t scheduled until 5^th round of matches on today he decided to have a bit of a lie in while I got up early to continue with my training for the Great North Run in September. I had a really nice run along Union Canal before joining the main road up to the tennis centre and then when I got there my plan was to book practice for this morning. We’d not been allowed to book any practice yesterday because the weather forecast wasn’t good and they wanted to keep the indoor courts reserved for the first couple of rounds of matches – and when I asked again at 8am I got the same response!!

With that I headed back to the B&B to meet up with Toby, have breakfast and then we got a bus at just after 10am back to the tennis centre. When we arrived Toby went straight to the practice desk to see what could be done and after a little persuading we managed to get the first indoor court available after the U14 Tennis Europe first round of matches had finished. That gave us around 25 minutes to warm up before we got on court to hit from 11-11.30am. Toby was hitting really well on the indoor courts and once we’d gone through some specific tactical work he felt ready for his first round match.

Due to the weather everything had been delayed and Toby and Jack didn’t end up going on court until 4.45pm. When they started it was Jack that settled into the match the quicker of the two and broke Toby’s serve in the opening game. Toby responded well to break straight back and then followed-up with a hold to take a 2-1* lead. At this stage I felt as though Toby had found his range and I fully expected him to use his physical advantage to push on and extend his lead but Jack fought hard in his next service game to level the set at *2-2. From that stage Jack raised his level hitting 4 winners and only 2 unforced errors in the next 4 games while Toby became more erratic and posted stats of 1 winner and 11 unforced errors which resulted in Jack taking the set 6-2.

The start of the second set was extremely tight and even though Toby found a high level of hitting at times, they were mainly in Jack’s service games which didn’t help him hold his own serve! The boys exchanged 3 service breaks each until 3-3* when Jack held and then went on to win the next two games in a row to take the match 6-2, 6-3.

It was a disappointing performance from Toby and even though Jack produced some good tennis during the match, Toby produced too many errors and only held serve once out of 9 service games which is not good enough to compete at this level.

The match finished at 6.15pm and after Toby had cooled down, showered and changed we got the bus back to the hotel. It was then out to Zizzi’s for dinner and then back to the B&B to go through the details of the match and prepare for the doubles tomorrow.

Schedule for tomorrow:

(1) Vincent Gillespie (GBR) & Calum McGoech (GBR) vs Toby Huffer (GBR) & Andrew Rozanov (GBR) – 4^th match after 9am (not before 2.30pm)

Sunday 5^th July 2015

Following an excellent week of training and competing in La Manga, which saw Toby Huffer reach the final of the Men’s singles and the Men’s doubles (with me!) we left Murcia on Friday afternoon and headed straight to Edinburgh for the U18 ITF event. As we boarded the plane in Spain Toby was 3^rd / 4^th on the Qualifying list but by the time we landed at Gatwick he had moved up into the Main Draw which meant that he could have a well-deserved rest day yesterday after playing 10 matches in 5 days.

I’ve been coming to the ITF and Tennis Europe events in Edinburgh since 2004 and you can almost guarantee that it will rain at some point during each day of the tournament!! It rained yesterday, which caused the majority of the play to go indoors, but when we woke this morning the weather was looking brilliant.

So that we could get a long training session in this morning we got the 6.36am bus from outside our Bed & Breakfast and starting warming up at the Craiglockhart Tennis Centre at 6.45am. We then trained on one court from 7.15am to 8am and then went over to the back courts to continue until matches started at 9am. I think the training and matches on the red clay last week have really helped to develop Toby’s game and if he can continue to improve over the next couple of weeks on clay then it’ll be a great start to the summer.

After training we booked practice for this afternoon and then headed back to the B&B for breakfast.

There wasn’t much to do between the morning session and our afternoon session so we just mainly relaxed at the B&B and got some lunch from the local Zizzi’s – check out how cheap it was for both of us!!

Once we had told the waitress there was a mistake we ended up paying just over £10 which wasn’t bad for two big meals and our drinks!

Our training session this afternoon was indoors from 3.15pm until 4.45pm – we decided to go indoors rather than wait to see if a clay court would become available after matches so that Toby was used to both surfaces in case it rained. We drilled for around 45 minutes until Toby was comfortable on the surface and then we went into a short set to 4 which saw Toby take me apart 4-2!

Following the training session Toby signed in and then, just as the rain started to fall, we got on the bus back to the B&B.

The rain continued on and off for the rest of the evening but it didn’t stop us walking into Edinburgh City centre to have dinner at ASK. We tried to get a bus on the way back but due to it being a Sunday the service was very sporadic so we walked almost the whole way and tried as hard as we could to avoid the rain!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Toby Huffer (GBR) (2053) vs Jack Draper (GBR) (1446) – 5^th match after 9am