Friday 10th February 2012

The phrase “it was another early start at the Nairobi Club” has been a ongoing joke amongst us all for the last couple of weeks as we have an early start everyday but it was more appropriate today as we were up and at breakfast by 6.15am.

By 6.30am we were all ready to leave for the safari but one person hadn’t arrived yet – Jack’s dad. He’d decided to fly over from Cairo to join Jack for the weekend as tomorrow is Jack’s 17th Birthday but Jack had no idea he was coming. When Tony arrived at 6.40am Jack was just walking down the stairs to reception and the look on his face was priceless!

By 6.45am we were all in the van and on our way to our first stop of the day – the Nairobi National Park. Once we’d paid our entry fee we were back in the van and into the park trying to spot anything that resembled an animal – we think that the rangers had planted trees that look like animals as to begin with that was all we kept spotting!

Eventually we started to see more and more animals and the deeper we went into the National Park the better the variety became. Throughout the 2 and a half hours we were in the National Park we spotted Impala’s, Ostriches, Warthogs, Buffalos, Baboons, Rhinos, Giraffes, Zebras and a whole load of other animals which we didn’t know the names of! It was great to see them all in their natural habitat and I think the highlight for everyone was seeing 9 or 10 Giraffes running across the road in front of us.

After the National Park we went to the Animal Orphanage where it was nice to see some of the animals we hadn’t seen in the park but it was difficult to see them all caged up. It’s great that they have rescued the animals as they would have died in the wild and it’s fantastic that the local school children can learn from seeing them but it’s still not nice to see such wild animals with such little space to roam.

From there we went to the best place of the day which was to see the Baby Elephant Orphanage at The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. We spent over an hour there (which is when they bring the elephants back to the site to feed each day between 11am-12pm before they then go back to the wild) which was absolutely fantastic. We listened for an hour to one of the keepers taking about the projects they have going on at the moment while the Baby Elephants were being fed behind her.

At 11.30am the youngest Elephants were guided back to the National Park and the slightly older ones came in for their turn to feed. It was amazing to watch huge Elephants drinking the same milk (SMA Gold) that my 6 month old daughter currently has each evening. The only difference was that my daughter has 8oz per evening where as the Elephants have 12 pints every 3 hours – that’s a hell of a lot of formula to make up but thanks to SMA, British Airways and a lot of other supporters the charity manages to keep the costs down.

If you ever want to support an animal charity then I think this is one of the best I’ve ever seen so please check out the website for more details – www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org

Our last stop of the day was to the Nairobi Safari Walk where Tony, Jack and I decided to give it a go while the others grabbed some food and relaxed. It was again a great experience and it gave us a chance to get much closer to all of the animals including the Rhinos and the Cheetahs – Jack’s highlight though was spotting a Crocodile in the middle of the National Park from high up on the walkway!

 

 

By 2pm we were all well and truly done for the day so we went back to the hotel to catch up on a bit of sleep and relax for the afternoon before having the traditional Friday night BBQ at the Hotel. After that we had a couple of frames of snooker before getting an early night to prepare for a full days training tomorrow.

Thursday 9th February 2012

It was a really tough day at the office today for Jack who was playing for his first ITF points but just fell short in a tight 3 set match.

After getting into the doubles draw yesterday as an Alternate Jack was fired up and ready to go this morning as we took to the practice court at 8am with his Russian partner Maxim Dmitriev. Maxim, like Jack, did not get into the singles qualifying draw and so for both of them this was a big chance to pick up their first ITF points and secure an under 18 world ranking.

The boys trained together for an hour while on the next court Mia and Tom each trained with one of the South African girls that we’d gone out to dinner with last night. Everyone had a really good session; it was nice to see such a high level of tennis being played and a really motivated team after a disappointing week of results. Jack’s motivation was obvious but for Tom and Mia their attention was now firmly on next week and being at a level to perform well throughout the last event.

At 9am we were all finished which left Jack with an hour to recap on his last doubles match, set some new goals for today’s match and then get himself ready to play. He took to the court with Maxim at 10am to take on wildcards Costin Economu from Romania and Francesco Migliano from Italy. Both of their opponents were from the Sánchez-Casal Academy in Spain and as Tom used to train there he new both of them pretty well.

Jack and Maxim had an ideal start to the match as Jack held serve in the first game, they then broke Costin’s serve and Maxim then held well to make it 3-0. Jack was moving very well at the net and his volleys were very sharp while Maxim was playing very consistently from the back of the court which often set Jack up at the net. From 3-0* the set went with serve until Jack and Maxim took it 6-3.

At the start of the 2nd set the boys decided that Maxim would serve first which surprised me as Jack had been serving so well but he held serve to level the set at 1-1*. At this stage it was obvious that of their opponents Costin was by far the stronger player; Francesco was quite solid from the back of the court but it was Costin that was making things happen for their team. At *1-2 Jack’s serve was broken and it was the first time that Maxim had looked weak at the net – in doubles it’s often the net player that will determine if a pair hold serve on not as they are the ones that can take the pressure off the server by moving and putting pressure on the returner. After trailing *1-4 Maxim held serve and then the boys broke straight back to bring the set back on serve but once again Maxim let Jack down in his service game which resulted in Jack being broken for the 2nd time. Francesco then served out the set thanks to Costin’s sharp net play and we were into a 3rd set match tie-break.

This was the third time that Jack had gone to 3 sets when playing for his first ITF ranking but it was to be 3rd time unlucky for him as some easy missed volleys from both of our boys resulted in them going 8-4 down. Jack and Maxim continued to fight hard but Costin and Francesco had the finish line in their sights and eventually took the match 3-6, 6-3, 10-6.

Once again it was hugely disappointing for Jack but he was boosted by the fact that it was by far his best doubles performance in this level of event. He moved at the net more than any of his previous matches and finished off more first volleys but at the end of the day both players need to perform well to get a victory and today that didn’t happen.

As we’ve been away for 14 days and have only had 1 rest day I gave the players the option last night of deciding what they did today before we rested on Friday. Jack had his doubles match so he had to play but Tom and Mia decided to do a solid half day before resting in the afternoon. That meant that from around 1pm all of the players were back at the hotel and getting on with some much needed school work. I’ve been very pleased with how the players have got on with their school work especially Tom who takes great pleasure in telling us how well he’s doing with it all!!

We headed out for dinner early tonight so that we could get back and play some more snooker afterwards. I played a 3-way game with Tom and Jack and after we all struggled to earn more points that we gave away in fouls I eventually came through in 1st place with Tom in 2nd and a very frustrated Jack in 3rd – it just wasn’t his day today!

Rest day tomorrow but it’s not going to be a day relaxing by the pool as we’re up early at 5.45am to go on Safari for the whole day – bring it the Big 5!!

Wednesday 8th February 2012

It was a day of mixed emotions today as on one hand Mia had a tough 1st round doubles loss but on the other hand Jack had some huge good fortune as he managed to get an alternate into the boy’s doubles.

Each day is now following a very similar pattern as the only time we’re almost guaranteed a court is between 8 – 9.30am. We’ve actually got to the stage where there’s no point in going over to the courts in the evening to make a booking as it seems everyone knows that we “own” that time slot on court 6!!

We started the session with all 4 of us training until 8.30am when Mia met up with her doubles partner and went on the court behind to go through their pre-match warm up. Tom and Jack stayed with me and we got down to some tough drilling for half an hour before Mia rejoined us to end the session with some points. I must add that during the session both Tom and Mia ended up covered in clay; Tom due to an almighty fall (which was very amusing to us but he wasn’t impressed!) while it was Mia’s nose and hands that got covered due to a few “accidental” press-ups that she had to do!

After the session there was just enough time for Mia to write her pre-match sheet, talk through her tactics with me and get a bite to eat before her and Alessandra Gisonna from Italy were on Centre Court for their doubles 1st round match.

They were taking on Anastasiya Shestakova (who Mia lost to in singles last week) and Krystyna Shumlianska (who Mia beat in the doubles last week) from the Ukraine and so it was a good chance for Mia to get some revenge. From the start though it was obvious that it was going to be a very tough match as both of the Ukrainian girls were very solid and quite quick at the net. Mia held serve to make it 1-1 in the first set but that was to be the last game our girls won in the entire match as they ended up losing 6-1, 6-0. Despite the score line Mia actually played quite well; she moved more at the net and finished more 1st volleys than her partner but unfortunately there weren’t enough of those types of play on consecutive points to get games on the board.

She was disappointed after the match but the big positive was that her energy levels and her communication were much better than last week so hopefully it’ll all come together next week for the final event of the trip.

I decided to go back to the hotel for lunch as the food at the Club hasn’t been very good for the last few days and it also gave me a chance to get on with some work on the computer. After I’d been gone for about an hour Tom came racing over the cricket pitch to ask if I’d seen Jack as he had a chance of getting into the doubles as an Alternate. Tom thought that Jack, Dawn and Mia might have gone to the local shop so with that I left everything in the restaurant at the hotel and raced out the front door and up the road to the shops. By the time I got there I was completely out of breath but just about managed to communicate to Jack that he needs to get back to the tournament site as soon as possible!

When we got to the referee’s desk we were told that there were 2 spaces in the doubles draw as 2 seeds had withdrawn so any pairs that wanted to sign in had 10 minutes to do so. Jack then raced over to the Public Service Club where his partner was practising to get him back on site to sign in. After about 20 minutes of coaches and players arguing that Alternates shouldn’t be allowed to sign in that late (which officially they shouldn’t be allowed to but I wasn’t going to say anything!) they finally did the draw. At this point I gave Jack some advice on which chip to choose and low and behold he picked himself and he was in the draw! As Jack and Maxim took the place of seeds they will now play tomorrow for their first ITF points.

After that crazy hour Tom and Mia were back on court over at the Public Service Club; Tom played a set with a local Kenyan boy and played very well while Mia worked on her serve on the next court for an hour. At 4pm Jack joined us and still had a huge smile on his face – funny how it was a little different a few days ago when he didn’t get the wildcard!! We all then returned to the club and the players went through their injury prevention work before stretching out to end a bit of a rollercoaster of a day.

For dinner tonight we met up with the South African Twins and their mum for a really nice meal at the Fairview Hotel and then returned to the Nairobi Club for some more team charades. Both Mia and I had to deal with teams that weren’t quite with it this evening – Mia managed to get her team to “The Globe Theatre” but no-one was guessing “Shakespeare” while I managed to get my team to “ The ….shank Redemption” but no-one could complete the title. We eventually both got our teams to guess the correct answer but not without a lot of steam coming out of our ears!!

Schedule for tomorrow (and for the 1st time this week Jack’s name is on the board!):

(ALT) Maxim Dmitriev (RUS) & Jack Large (GBR) vs Costin Economu (ROU) & Francesco Migliano (ITA) – 1st match at 10am

Tuesday 7th February 2012

It was a hot day on site at the Nairobi Club today where a huge swarm of Butterflies almost caused play to be abandoned! Tom was competing for the second time in the doubles main draw and Mia had a lot of waiting around before her match was eventually postponed until tomorrow.

As in previous days are regular training session from 8 – 9.30am on court 8 was fully booked but again the players who had booked the court didn’t turn up! This meant that we had the whole court so we spent the session working on doubles specifics before Tom’s and Mia’s first round matches. At 9.30am we were all done on court and our attention turned to keeping up to date with the player’s strength and conditioning programmes. Jack and Tom wanted to change up their programme as they’d been doing the same exercises for the last 12 days so, with the help of all the equipment I travel with, they devised their own mini-circuit which I was quite impressed with:

At 11.30am Mia went off site to play a practice set with Louise-Mare Botes from South Africa while I stayed on site with Tom to prepare him for his doubles. I always think it’s important while we’re away for the players to train with as many different players as possible so, as we’re about halfway through the trip, I challenged the players to see how many they could hit with before we go home. Currently Jack and Tom have trained with 5 different players (not including each other!) and Mia has hit with 4 – their goal is to hit with more than 10.

As we were waiting for Tom’s doubles match to go on we were amazed to see that 2 girls had to wait on court for over 45 minutes before their match in very hot conditions before their court was watered. They had asked the referee if they could come off but she said that they had to wait – it was utterly unacceptable and not a way to treat the junior players.

Tom went on for his doubles around 2.30pm and had set very clear goals on what he wanted to achieve from this match – you can never guarantee winning or losing but you can make sure you improve in every match you play. Tom and Akim were up against the very strong and fiery Israeli team of Yuval Barak and Nimrod Berman. The first two games were very close and competitive but when Tom was broken at *1-1 the Israeli team stepped up a gear and raced to a 5-1 lead before taking the set 6-2. The second set was much closer but this time it was Akim that was broken at *2-2 and then Tom was broken at *2-4 to leave our boys 5-2 down. The score line didn’t affect them though and they responded by getting their first break of the match and then holding to make their opponent have to serve out the match. This time the Israelis didn’t make the same mistake and held well to take the match 6-2, 6-4.

Both Tom and I were pleased with his performance and it was very obvious that his confidence at this level is growing by the day. His movement at the net and his volleys were much better than in his previous doubles match and I think Tom and Akim’s attitude and work rate was superb throughout.

After Tom had finished Mia was due to play her first round doubles match but by this time it was 5pm and one of the girls that she was supposed to play against was still on court playing singles! This meant that the referee had to postponed the match until tomorrow as it would have been too dark to play later in the day.

All three of the players then completed their injury prevention exercises and stretched out before we went back to the hotel to shower for dinner. We decided to have dinner at our hotel tonight so that the players would have more time afterwards to do school work, call home or just relax.

Jack and I finished the day with a good game of snooker for the second time on the trip and I’m pleased to report that I’m currently 2-0 up – allez!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Anastasiya Shestakova (UKR) & Krystyna Shumlianska (UKR) vs Alessandra Gisonna (ITA) & Mia Smith (GBR) – 2nd match after 9.30am

Monday 6th February 2012

It’s been another long day on and off the court at the Nairobi Club today which included the high of one of the boys getting into the doubles but the low of Mia suffering a first round singles defeat.

The boys and I are getting used to seeing the sun come up over the cricket pitch now as all of our sessions are starting early but this morning’s training was made even more difficult for me as I’d been up all night with a dodgy stomach! I managed to get a little bit of food down at breakfast before we were all warming up at 7.30am to start the session at 8am.

Today’s morning session was probably the best one we’d had since the trip begun; Jack and Tom were both working as hard as ever but their quality of hitting had increased significantly since day 1 and Tom was really started to push Jack from the back of the court. The session seemed to fly by which is always a good sign but by 9.15am I was starting to get a little concerned as Mia wasn’t on site warming up. Once we finished at 9.30am I saw Dawn who informed me that Mia had endured a similar night to me and was feeling pretty rough so had decided to stay at the hotel.

It was only at about 9.45am that the referee finally released the girl’s draw and we saw that Mia was scheduled for 3rd match on against Iva Ivkovic from Serbia (the girl she played a practice set with on Saturday!). With that Dawn made her way back over to the hotel to get Mia and, after she’d had a good warm up, we finally managed to get on court for a pre-match hit from 10.45 – 11.15am.

After the session Mia looked worse than before and it was obvious that she was feeling pretty weak. Luckily the 1st round match on Centre Court had gone to 3 sets so it gave Mia sometime to eat, relax and try to get in the right frame of mind to compete.

She took to the court just after 12.30pm and it was obvious from the start that this was going to be a very difficult match; Mia was still struggling with how she was feeling and Iva was not in the mood for giving out any sympathy! Mia served first and lead 40-15 in the opening game but 3 unforced errors lead to her being broken. That then lead to Mia struggling with her consistency throughout the set and Iva took full advantage winning the next 6 games in a row to lead 6-0, 1-0. Iva was just playing a solid game; she didn’t have anything big in her game but was patient and quite happy to wait for Mia to miss.

Mia staged a mini comeback and actually lead 2-1 in the 2nd set but a total of 38 unforced errors and only 9 winners lead to her going down 6-0, 6-2. It wasn’t a good performance from Mia but considering the way she was feeling before she went on the court I think she did well to work hard throughout the match and put up a bit of a fight in the 2nd set.

After Mia’s singles we checked the doubles draw and found out that Tom had been awarded a wildcard into the draw with Akim Ntwali from Rwanda. Jack was obviously disappointed not to get into the draw but he turned his attention to his second session of the day and had a good 45 minute hit with one of the Polish boys. Tom also got back on court this afternoon with his Russian hitting partner and had a long 2 hour + session where they managed to almost play a whole match. Tom lost the first set 6-1 but fought back well to take the second set 6-4 and then the boys decided to play a match tie-break for the third where Tom eventually went down 10-4. He was really pleased with his performance and his high level from the session this morning was again reproduced this afternoon. He was even more pleased with the afternoon session though as he was able to reproduce that level in point play rather than just in drilling.

For dinner tonight we again went to the Fairview hotel but decided to go to one of their other restaurants at the back of the hotel by the swimming pool. The food was of the same high standard as usual and, on the recommendation of the waiter, I went for the Mango Chicken. I did think it would just be chicken with a mango sauce but was delighted to have this presented in front of me:

Schedule for tomorrow:

Yuval Barak (ISR) & Nimrod Berman (ISR) vs Tom Hulme (GBR) & Akim Ntwali (RWA) – 5th match after 9am (not before 2pm)

Anastasiya Shestakova (UKR) & Krystyna Shumlianska (UKR) vs Alessandra Gisonna (ITA) & Mia Smith (GBR) – 6th match after 9am

Sunday 5th February 2012

It was the final day of preparation for Mia today before her 1st round main draw tomorrow while the boys had their work cut out trying to find a partner for the doubles.

All of the players were up early this morning for a 7am breakfast and then they all trained together from 8 – 9.30am. It was good to have all three players together on court so that two could work together while I did some individual work with the other one. We were lucky enough to get two courts for the last hour so that we could play some full court points out and also work on serve and return.

By 9.30am we were all done and pleased with the morning session so now my attention moved to running with Dawn! We had a good 5 laps around the cricket pitch where Dawn beat her quickest time on each lap and just to add a competitive edge we got Mia to record a lap time. Her first one was only 20 seconds quicker than Dawn but once Mia realised what we were doing she wanted another go! On her second attempt she went off like a rocket and at half way we thought she was going to collapse but she eventually got through it 45 seconds quicker than her first go!

Everyone had a break in the middle of the day and our attention turned to trying to get the boys into the doubles. As they didn’t get into the singles qualifying they would go down as 5th priority on the entry list even if they played with the number 1 seed so I came up with the idea of them trying to find a local player and requesting a wildcard. With that the boys went their separate ways and started asking ever African player that could find. With both boys believing they had the best partner for a wildcard they wrote their letters and passed them on to the referee – we’ll see tomorrow if either of them were successful!

Mia was back on court for her 2nd session of the day at 2pm to play a practice set with Kasandra Kozub from Poland. She had a really good set and, despite the poor state of the practice courts, she found the best level that she’s played at from the back of the court and she also served well. She lost the set 6-4 but she felt good and ready for her main draw match tomorrow.

As soon as she finished I left her to complete her strength and conditioning programme and went over to the Public Service Club to be on court with Jack and Tom. They had arranged sessions with different players to add variety in their training and when I arrived they were both working very hard. Jack was hitting with a boy from Canada and a boy from India while Tom had hooked up with a Russian boy who, like Tom, had not got into the qualifying draw.

By the time we had finished both Jack and Tom were happy with their level but it was Tom that seemed extra-pleased as it was the first day for a while where he wasn’t feeling unwell and he was really enjoying working hard. After the session we walked back to the club (following Jack on a sneaky short-cut over a wall!!) and then Jack went through his maintenance programme while Mia and Tom had a thorough stretch out.

This evening we decided to get to the Fairview hotel early to make use of their free WiFi as all of our “pay as you go” internet on our dongles had run out! The players and I then each tucked into a big bowl of pasta while Dawn opted for the Quesadilla’s. It was then time to make some Skype calls home before walking back to the hotel for an early night.

Schedule for tomorrow:

To be confirmed once the final girl’s qualifying match is completed in the morning.

Saturday 4th February 2012

It was a tough day for the boys today as our suspicions were confirmed that they would not quite make the cut-off to get into the qualifying draw.

Tom and I had an early breakfast at 7am so that we could get on court by 8am and get the whole court to ourselves. We then had a good session for an hour and a half where we continued to work on how Tom constructs the points and how aggressive he is from the back of the court. It was very much a session to push Tom outside his comfort zone and the results were very pleasing for both of us.

During the last 30 minutes of the session Jack arrived to warm up and by 9.30am he was ready to start his individual session with me. Just like Tom, Jack worked very hard and performed well during the session as we worked on developing his game both from the back of the court and when he comes forwards.

During the time the boys were on court with me, Mia was training off site but on her return we all got together to have some well earned lunch while we watched some of the boy’s and girl’s singles finals. The boy’s final was of a high quality and the winner was actually the Italian boy that beat Jack in the final round of qualifying! The girl’s final was disappointing as both players were just making balls and waiting for the other person to miss – I said to all of the players at the start of the week that the winner of each event would not be the one that looks the best but the one that is the most consistent and this was definitely the case with the girls. The girl’s winner was actually the Ukrainian that was 3-1 down to Mia in their first set!

After the matches Mia was back on court to play a practice set with a Serbian girl while Jack had a solid hour of serving. Mia lost a close set 6-4 but applied herself well and was happy with her own performance while Jack made significant improvements on the consistency of his first serve.

After each of the players went through their fitness for the day they stretched out and showered ready for dinner. Before we left for dinner we went back to the tennis courts to see if the boys had got into the qualifying but unfortunately Tom was 6 places out and Jack was 7 places out. We were all very disappointed that they didn’t get in but in total there were 9 players who competed last week (in the “stronger” Grade 4 event) that didn’t get into this week’s Grade 5 event.

Everyone was a little down at dinner but our spirits were lifted by the restaurant entertainment guy who always had a big smile on his face!

The boys will now put in a full training week and hope to get into the doubles on Monday while Mia will complete her final day of training tomorrow before her main draw starts on Monday.