Wednesday 18th November 2015

It was a disappointing end to our time here in Norway as Toby went down in both singles and doubles today.

We were up very early this morning and in the lobby of the hotel warming up at 6.30am as the tennis centre doesn’t open until 7am. We then walked over to the courts and were let in my Carl Maes who had been entrusted with the key today – it was a good job that he did have it too otherwise our 30 minute warm up would have been undone within minutes in the cold outside!

Toby and I had a good training session for an hour and were able to go through all of the things that we wanted to work on yesterday evening but weren’t able to due to the matches overrunning. We warmed up as normal and then did some drilling, point play out of the hand and then finished the session with some serving points. We then headed back to the hotel and went straight up to the 21st floor for some well-earned breakfast.

At just before 9.15am we went back over to the tennis centre to have a brief warm-up to prepare for Toby’s 9.30am match against 6th seed Marcus Sulen from Norway. Even though the first 4 games of the match went with serve they were quite flat from both players and it was Marcus that raised his game first and broke Toby to take a 2-4* lead. Toby tried hard to stay with his opponent but by this stage Marcus was full of confidence and reeled off the next two games with 6 winners and only 2 unforced errors to take the first set 6-2.

At the start of the second set Toby raised his hitting level and his intensity which took him from *1-2 down to *3-2 up with a very important break of serve. It was at this stage that I felt as though the momentum was shifting in the match but Marcus kept his frustrations in check and fought hard to break back and hold to regain a lead in the set. The *3-4 game was crucial to the match and unfortunately 4 unforced errors from Toby handed Marcus another break and he took advantage by holding serve in the next game to take the match 6-2, 6-3.

Credit as always has to go to Marcus for the win but Toby and I were left reflecting on a match that was definitely winnable.

We headed back to the hotel so that Toby could shower and change and then we walked down the road to the supermarket to get some lunch. We only had just over an hour and a half to have lunch and rest before we needed to be back over to the tennis centre to warm up for the doubles.

Normally when a match is scheduled for ‘not before 2pm’ it usually goes on around 2.30/3pm but court 6 was racing through the matches today and Toby went on exactly on time. The main focus for the doubles was to work on finishing more first volleys and also hit the targets when serving to set up Toby’s partner at the net.

Having trained with Gilbert Jaeger and Axel Oljons on Monday we knew that they were both good players and in particular Axel had a big serve and Gilbert was sharp around the net. When the match began Toby and Neil Oberleitner from Austria started poorly and were broken in three of their first four service games. Some of that was due to Toby and Neil not having played together but the majority of it was just down to their Swedish opponents being very switched on. At *1-5 Toby played a very good game to hold for the first time with 5 out of 6 first serves but Gilbert held in the next game to take the opening set 6-2.

The second set was completely the opposite of the first set; Toby and Neil started very well and it was Axel and Gilbert that struggled on their own serves. Despite losing a sudden death deuce game at 2-1* on Gilbert’s serve, Toby and Neil continued to apply the pressure on the number 2 seeds and after holding all 5 of their service games they eventually got a set point at 5-4* sudden death deuce with Alex serving. Unfortunately the Swedes held their nerve and their serve to level the set and then went on to break Neil to take a 5-6* lead. Gilbert then served well to take the match 6-2, 7-5.

Despite the loss (and the performance in the first set!) both Toby and I were very pleased with how the boys responded after the first set and the quality of doubles that they produced in the second set. If Toby can continue to develop his doubles like he did in the second set then I know that these matches will go his way in the near future.

For dinner tonight we once again headed to AMFI shopping centre to go to PastaPasta and then it was back to the hotel to pack everything up ready for our flight back to London tomorrow.

The last international trip of the year starts on Saturday and is to the Grade 5 ITF in the Bahamas. Join us then to see how it’s all going in (hopefully!) some much warmer weather than we’ve had here!

 

Tuesday 17th November 2015

Toby got the show on the road today with a solid first round win over tricky Qualifier Gustaf Navarp from Sweden to move him into the Last 16.

As we weren’t able to get in a huge amount of hitting yesterday we decided to get up early and train before our allotted practice time of 7.30am so that we could have almost an hour on court. That meant that we were up and warming up in the lobby of the hotel at 6.45am before going over to the club at 7am. When we arrived we finished off the last 15 minutes of our warm-ups and then started hitting at 7.15am. As always we played a quick game of ‘bounce’ to get us both moving and get the heart-rate up … and it definitely did that!

From 7.15am until 8am we went through an extended pre-match hit and within a few minutes we both realised that Hall 1 was quite a bit quicker than Hall 2 which we hit in yesterday – which made the decision to hit for longer this morning even more worthwhile. By 8am Toby had gone through everything and was feeling good so we went straight back to the hotel and up to the 21st floor for breakfast.

It was then back to the courts at 9.15am to keep an eye on the match before Toby’s and also make sure that we had everything ready for the match.

At 10.45am Toby went on court for his match and despite not knowing anything about his opponent we knew that he had won 3 matches in Qualifying so he obviously knew his way around these courts. Our focus recently has been on what Toby is doing on the court rather than worrying too much about specific tactics against opponents and I was pleased to see that from the start Toby was very much focussed on himself.

Toby raced to a 3-0* lead in the first set by playing some smart tennis and, whereas in the past where he might have got distracted when his opponent started to get games on the board, he maintained a good focus throughout the set to take it 6-2.

The second set followed the same scoreline as the first and at 6-2, 3-0 it seemed that Toby had the match in the bag . . . unfortunately Gustaf didn’t agree! The Swede held serve at 3-0* and then at 4-1* down he started pumping himself up which really raised the level of his game. Gustaf held serve to make it *4-2 and then for the first time in 8 service games Toby was broken following an erratic game. Once again he didn’t let the fact that Gustaf was closing the gap put him off and he broke straight back to take a *5-3 lead and serve for the match. The next two games went against Toby and even though he managed to get back on track and take the set to a tie-break he had amounted 10 unforced errors in the 4 games from 5-3 to 6-6 – compared to 11 unforced errors in the whole of the 8 game first set!

The first 7 points of the tie-break went against serve (which is very unusual for a boy’s match) but Toby held his two service points at *4-3 and went on to take the tie-break 7-3. It was a good win overall and even though Toby was disappointed with letting his opponent back into the match from 6-2, 4-1 up I looked at it from the other angle of Toby being able to re-set and flight hard when his opponent raised his level. Either way there was lots to learn from the match and we now have the chance to work on it tomorrow in the next round.

As the match schedule was packed out today with ITF and Tennis Europe matches we weren’t able to book a practice court until 8pm this evening which meant that the whole afternoon was spent at the hotel. It did give Toby a great opportunity to review the whole match though as I had filmed it from the balcony.

While we were at the hotel this afternoon the doubles draw came out:

We decided to go to PastaPasta for an early dinner at 5pm so that we had enough time to let the food digest before we needed to warm-up at 7.30pm but when we arrived at the tennis club the referee said that due to the matches running late there wouldn’t be any practice courts this evening. That was very annoying but the good news was that play doesn’t start tomorrow until 9.30am so we can go in early again and hit for an hour from7-8am to work on specifics from today’s match.

Schedule for tomorrow:

(8) Marcus Sulen (SWE) (839) vs Toby Huffer (GBR) (1585) – 1st match at 9.30am

Toby Huffer (GBR) & Neil Oberleitner (AUT) vs (2) Gilbert Jaeger (SWE) & Axel Oljons (SWE) – 4th match after 9.30am (not before 2pm)

Monday 16th November 2015

Following the Luxembourg ITF last week, Toby Huffer and I were on the road once again for the second of our three ITFs in November and the destination this week is Stavanger in Norway.

Last night we stayed in a hotel at Heathrow airport as we needed to check-in this morning at 6am and we didn’t fancy lugging our bags across London at that time in the morning! The flight then left on time and it was all going very smoothly until we came into land when the high winds and heavy rain caused a bit of a hair-raising landing!

We got the airport bus to the hotel and then once we had checked-in we went next door to the tennis centre to get a feel for the place and book some practice for later in the day but all the referee could offer was half an hour at 7.30pm!

It was then time to get some lunch at the local supermarket and relax for a few hours at the hotel before going back to the tennis centre at 4pm.

I’ve got a feeling that the practice situation at the club is going to be very tight this week as there’s not only a Tennis Europe and ITF event taking place but also a Norwegian National event later in the week! However, after getting to know the referee a little he managed to get us on a court this afternoon between matches from 5-6pm which gave Toby a great opportunity to get used to the courts. I started training with him and then after 10 minutes he was joined by 3 Swedish boys and they all had a good session together. Toby hit for around 20 minutes from the back of the court to get a good feel for the speed (which was actually pretty quick, especially off the lines!) and then he went through his normal routine of warming up his volleys, smashes and serves. All four players then mixed in and played some full-court points for the last 15 minutes to round off a very good training session.

Once we were finished we headed back to the hotel and even though it’s only about a 1 minute walk away we needed to make sure we wrapped up warm before leaving as the wind out here is really biting!

We then showered and changed before heading back out for the 10-15 minute walk down the road to the shopping centre where we found our perfect restaurant for the week – ‘PastaPasta’!

Whilst we were at dinner the draw came out:

When then headed back to the hotel via an unintentional detour (basically got a bit lost!) and had an early night ready for Toby’s first match tomorrow.

Schedule for tomorrow:

Toby Huffer (GBR) (1585) vs (Q) Gustaf Navarp (SWE) (2171) – 2nd match after 9am