Saturday 2nd January 2016

It was a disappointing opening day here in Stockholm for us today as Toby lost in the 1st round of Qualifying to Linus Lovgren from Sweden.

We were up early this morning and left the hotel before breakfast to make sure we could get a whole hour of training in before the matches started. We warmed up from 7-7.30am and then Toby and I trained together for around 20 minutes on a full court which gave us the opportunity to play some points. Fellow Brit Andrew Rozanov then came on court to hit with Toby and, even though we were reduced to half a court for the majority of the session, both boys trained well together until 8.30am. We even managed to get some full court serving points in with another player which was very beneficial in our preparations for Toby’s match.

Straight after the session we headed back to the hotel to shower and change and then we met up for a well-needed breakfast.

We were back at the club at 11am to see how the matches were going and also give a bit of support to Nils Larsson-Regnstrom who travelled with us to Sri Lanka back in 2014. Unfortunately Nils lost and as Toby was scheduled for the 4th match on the same court we decided to get some food before preparing for his match.

Toby went on court at 1.15pm and even though he started well by breaking serve in the first game, he had a bit of a nightmare in the next game and hit 4 unforced errors including 3 double faults! The rest of the set didn’t get much better as Toby struggled with his timing and ended up losing the set 6-2.

Thankfully Toby found some form at the start of the 2nd set and once he broke Linus and held to take a 3-1 lead his confidence started to return. Linus held serve in the next game but Toby went on to hold and then break again with some very good hitting from the back of the court which was non-existent in the 1st set! Linus put in a good returning game when Toby served for the set at *5-2 but Toby held off a Break Point with his first ace of the match and then went on to take the set 6-2.

Just like in the 2nd set Toby raced to a 3-1* lead in the 3rd but it was at this stage that Linus found his best level of the match to win the next 3 games in a row to take a 3-4 lead. Toby found himself in a very difficult situation at *0-40 in the next game but he fought hard to win 5 points in-a-row to level the set at 4-4*. Linus then continued his run of form into his service game and after holding he went on to break Toby to take the match 6-2, 2-6, 6-4.

It definitely wasn’t the result that we had expected and I think if Toby had started the match playing in the same way that he did in the 2nd set then maybe the result would have been different.

As Toby has lost in the first round of Qualifying it is very unlikely that he will be able to get into the doubles so, after discussing our options after the match, we will now fly home tomorrow to train for 4 days before flying out to Malmo for the next ITF on Friday. If we had decided to stay our training would have been very limited due to the ITF and 2 National events taking up all of the court time during the day so it made sense to save money on hotel and food costs and return home.

We had dinner at the club again tonight before returning to the hotel to pack and prepare for a 5 hour train journey to Copenhagen where we will fly back to London tomorrow afternoon.

Friday 1st January 2016

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

I hope you all have a fantastic and very successful 2016 and hopefully I can help to give you an insight into life of a travelling tennis coach.

So … after a training block in December Toby Huffer and I were back on the road almost as soon as Big Ben chimed midnight! Well … actually, Toby managed a few hours’ sleep before he left home to come down to Kent to pick me up and then we headed around the M25 to Heathrow – funnily enough there was no traffic on the M25 at 6.30am this morning!

We got to Heathrow quite early but it gave us a chance to catch up over some breakfast before we boarded our 10.50am flight to Stockholm. Toby managed to sleep the whole way and I had to try very hard to resist the temptation to take a picture of him catching flies as he slept!!

When we arrived in Stockholm we got a taxi straight to our hotel which is right next door to the SALK tennis club. I’ve been out here on 4 occasions in the past and I have to say I absolutely love the hotel, club and the little town that there are in. It’s a very easy event for the players as the hotel is 50 metres from the club, 100 metres from the supermarket and about a 5 minute walk from a very good Italian restaurant – what more could you ask for?!

After getting a bite to eat we warmed up from 4.30-5pm and then hit from 5-6pm on the top courts which is almost like hitting in the roof! The club boasts 14 indoor courts and not one is at road level – there are 6 under the ground which is great for viewing from the balcony, 2 courts are up a couple of steps and the other 6 are in the roof!

Despite us both struggling to time the ball for the first 5-10 minutes (mainly due to tiredness and the lighting) we eventually found a good level and after around 30-40 minutes of drilling / serve and return work, we played some good points off the ground before finishing with 2 service games each.

By the time we came off court it was just after 6pm so we booked some practice courts for tomorrow morning and then headed back to the hotel to shower and change before dinner.

I was planning on going to the Italian restaurant down the road but when we came back to the club around 7pm to check the draw we saw that the club restaurant was still serving food so we decided to eat there. After we ordered our food we managed to see the draw:

We finished dinner around 8pm and after a long day of travelling we decided to have an early night to get the best preparation possible for tomorrow.

Schedule for tomorrow:

Linus Lovgren (SWE) (2240) vs (8) Toby Huffer (GBR) (1415) – 4th match after 9am