Saturday 8th October 2011

After 8 straight days of training and matches it was time for a well deserved rest but unfortunately it wasn’t a complete rest day as we had to travel from Binh Duong to Bac Lieu – a 250km journey and you never know how long that’s going to take in Vietnam!!

After working until 1.45am I was up at 4 hours later to pack everything up and make sure our hotel bill was correct – it took the hotel 45 minutes to get it right but after paying up they were still chasing me 4 hours later saying we owed them more!! We all had breakfast together and then at 8am got a taxi to the club expecting the bus to leave at 10am as scheduled. I should have remembered that it’s never that straightforward in Vietnam and at 9.55am we were told we’d have to wait until after the singles matches before the bus would leave. That wasn’t all bad as it gave Mia a chance to watch and analyse the girl’s semi-finals before we left. The plan was changed again at 11.30am and we were told we were leaving in 5 minutes. Our team got on the bus first and as nobody was taking responsibility to pack the bags on the bus I decided I would do it – unforced error on my part there! After doing it for 20 minutes I looked like this:

And the seats behind where we were sitting looked like this:

We eventually got away just after 12pm and that was after people from our hotel had arrived at the club and tried to tell me they hadn’t charged us enough for our stay! I wasn’t having any of that and got on the bus and away we went.

After a gruelling 8 hour 30 minute journey, only stopping once, we arrived in Bac Lieu around 8.45pm. It wasn’t a very comfortable trip but Mia’s DVDs and a combination of my singing and Mia’s dancing got us through!!

After meeting our translator for the week we all hit the supermarket to stock up on water, fruit and cereal before having a quick bite to eat for dinner and then heading off to bed for a well deserve nights sleep. It’s good to be back in Bac Lieu – this is one of the best Grade 5 tournaments I’ve ever been too so I’m really looking forward to a great week.

Friday 7th October 2011

We had a fantastic day today to end our first week in Vietnam which included some of the day over ground and some of it underground!

The earliest bus this morning was at 8am so we trained for a couple of hours from 8.45am with Anais and a new addition to our “team” – Julia Weisel from Hawaii. It was very hot this morning but the quarter-final matches were outdoors so we were under cover where the humidity was even worse than it had been all week. After a solid session of mainly point play we stretched out, had lunch and then were picked up from the tennis centre at 12pm by a taxi from our hotel to take us to the Cu Chi Tunnels.

After just over an hour of driving on flooded, pothole filled dodgy roads we arrived at the Cu Chi Tunnels just 70km north west of Ho Chi Minh City. The Cu Chi Tunnels are the famous tunnels that were built by the local Cu Chi people during the Vietnam War to fight against the Americans. The locals built over 250kms of tunnels all by hand and in the tunnel system they had living areas, dinning rooms, kitchens, wells to collect water, medical areas including rooms to conduct surgery as well as escape routes into the Saigon River. It truly is an amazing feat and something that anyone visiting the areas should come and see.

We spent about 20 minutes watching a documentary on the local area and how the tunnels were constructed before our tour guide explained the system in more detail. We were very fortunate to have a personal tour guide for our group, I think the torrential rain had put off the normal flow of tourists today. He then took us around the site, telling us all about how everything was build, how they set booby traps to trap and kill American soldiers and then took us through quite a few different tunnels. I visited this site back in 2003 when I was here with my wife but they have opened up more tunnels now and there’s a lot more to see.

After a couple of hours of crawling through small spaces, the girls screaming their heads off as we came across a couple of small bats in the tunnels and me trying to fit down an original tunnel entrance we left that area and headed over to the shooting range for me and Pierre to fire an M16 rifle and the girls to have a go at an AK47!!

It took us just under an hour and a half to drive back to the hotel and everyone was thoroughly exhausted after a long but very enjoyable day. We all had dinner together but Julia and her mum were extremely disappointed that there wasn’t any “Snake’s Head” available as they had been talking about trying that all day!

It’s now time to pack up everything before we leave tomorrow morning for the 7-10 hour drive (you never know how long it will take in Vietnam!) to Bac Lieu for the next event which starts on Monday.

It’s been a fantastic week, both Mia and I have learnt a lot about her game, about her as a person and also had a chance to experience a different way of life and culture. If we can learn just as much next week and put some of it into practise then win or lose it will be a very successful trip.

Thursday 6th October 2011

It was just a training day today but we weren’t about to take it lightly as it gave us a great opportunity to develop with Mia’s next match 4 days away.

Early start as normal this morning and we got the first bus at 7.30am to give us the best chance to get a full court to play a set with one of the Swedish girls. Mia completed her full physical warm up before hitting with me for 25 mins so that at 9am she was ready to go straight into a set. As I said yesterday it’s great that there are so many girls to train with at these events, the only probably is working it so that you can get a full court and not have to share with players that are just going through 30 minute pre-match warm ups.

Mia played a good set with Sofia Segerfors and continued to develop the areas that we highlighted from her singles match. She found a much more consistent level today and was developing more points without trying to finish it too early. As they played I made notes on her performance goals and I was also able to film the set so that Mia could watch herself play and hopefully see what I see! The set lasted just over an hour with Mia narrowly going down 6-3, I would have liked them to play one more but Sofia had doubles later so they both stopped just after 10.30am.

We then had lunch and at 12.15pm were back onto the basketball court to warm up before completing Mia’s strength and conditioning programme. It started with some speed and movement work with the bungee rope and then moved onto a tough strength programme which lasted just over an hour. It was very hot during the session but Mia worked hard and proved that she’s not just one of these players that think all the important work is done on the court hitting balls.

After the session Mia stretched out and showered before we got the bus back to the hotel. We then had a couple of hours before dinner so Mia emailed her training team with her feedback from the first week while I went in search of a bank to get a good exchange rate for some Dollars. I thought the exchange rate at the hotel wouldn’t be great so I went for a walk and after 20 minute found a bank that would change some money. When they told me the rate it was only 30 dong (about 1 penny) better per Dollar than the hotel – well worth the 40 minute round trip then!!!!!

After dinner with the French guys we all went to play table tennis but got severely outclassed by the Thai team who dominated everyone they played – I did manage to scrape a win against Pierre though!

We ended the day by going through the video of Mia’s set against Sofia. She found it very useful and made a lot of notes on the positive areas as well as the things that she wants to improve on. She’ll now select 3 of those areas and set them as goals for her practise set against Anais tomorrow morning. We were going to travel to Bac Lieu tomorrow but now we’re going to train in the morning and then hit the Cu Chi Tunnels in the afternoon.

Wednesday 5th October 2011

The rain came down again today for the 6th day in a row but it didn’t dampen our training or Mia’s development.

It’s getting to be our routine that we’re up at 6.15am, having eggs and bread for breakfast at 6.45am and then on the bus driving to the centre at 7.30am. Mia wasn’t due on for her match until 2.30pm but we’re not ones to have a lie in and take it easy! We were on the court warming up at 8.15am and had a great session with three different partners (I think Mia wore them all out!) for 2 hours. The great thing about these events is that even if you’re out of all of the events there are still loads of players around to train with and it’s great experience to hit with so many different types of players.

After the morning session we had lunch and then debriefed on both the singles and doubles matches from yesterday. I normally go through parts of the match as soon as the player comes off court but it’s much more beneficial to revisit the match the day after once everything has had a chance to digest. Mia responded really well to the talk and we set some goals going forward into next week’s singles matches. We then spent a couple of hours watching some of the other main draw players and learning from what they’re doing well before Mia’s pre-match preparation started for her doubles.

Anais had won her singles comfortably against a Swedish girl and both players were really up for getting stuck into the second seeds. They started very well playing a solid game to break Claudia Williams but that was really the highlight of the match as they lost the next 12 games in a row. To be fair it wasn’t as one sided as the score line suggests and Mia especially improved her doubles game from the match yesterday. Mia and Anais played well in parts but they were too inconsistent and struggled to win the important points after getting to 30-30. It was another great learning experience and I can see Mia is starting to become comfortable in uncomfortable situations which is exactly what we wanted from the trip.

After the match it was still raining so we went into the badminton courts and, in-between getting mauled by hundreds of mosquitos, Mia completed her core programme and then had a thorough stretch out to end the day. Another good day in the bank, we might not have picked up any points this week but Mia’s getting close and it’s not going to be long before she gets on the board.

We were thinking about taking a day off tomorrow to visit the Chu Chi Tunnels and learning a bit about the Vietnam War but that would mean we’d have 2 days without hitting (as we’re travelling to the next event all day Friday) so we’ll try and move that to the end of the tournament next week. We’ve arranged practise sets tomorrow to keep Mia sharp which means another 6.15am start to the day – sorry Mia!!

Tuesday 4th October 2011

It was a real mix of emotions today as Mia competed in her first ITF main draw in both singles and doubles. One match was disappointing, one was superb but most importantly she learnt a lot and developed her game in both.

Early start this morning; I had to give Mia a 6.15am wake up call as her phone was in my room charging and to my surprise she was already up! We had breakfast at 6.45am and then got on the bus early to make sure we got a seat.

After a good physical warm up Mia hit with a girl from Singapore for 30 minutes and by 9am she was ready to go. Unfortunately the rain came down which meant the schedule had to be changed so that all the girls got to play undercover. By 10am the sun had come out and the courts were now dry so a 3rd schedule was produced meaning Mia was moved onto an uncovered court starting at 10.30am.

It was Mia’s first ever ITF singles main draw but she looked very comfortable in the warm up and I was thinking that it was going to be a really good match. Unfortunately Mia’s consistency let her down from the start and her opponent from Taipei picked up on it early and decided she was just going wait for Mia to miss. Mia managed to hold at 0-4 and 1-5 but couldn’t do enough to break her opponent to get back into the set and lost the first set 6-2. Mia seemed to re-set at the start of the 2nd and played a really good service game but couldn’t convert her two game points leading her to get broken. She responded to this well by breaking straight back and holding to lead 2-1 but at this stage the form from the first set popped its head up again and Mia lost the next 5 games in a row while Yuna Usui only hit 3 winners. Mia was very disappointed to go down 6-2, 6-2 to a girl we both felt she could have beaten but there were a lot of positives to take from the match and I challenged her to show me the improvements that she needed to make in her doubles 1st round match.

The doubles, like the singles, was moved and I had to fight hard to get Mia an extra 5-10 minutes to be able to warm up properly but at 3pm Mia and Anais went on court. Also like the singles we had set performance and outcome goals so Mia knew exactly what was expected from her whether she won or lost. The first set was a bit up and down (like most girl’s doubles!!) – after getting broken and breaking straight back Mia and Anais then took a 4-2 lead before being pegged back to 4-4. To their credit they then focused in hard and won the next two games to take the set 6-4. The girls from Taipei weren’t done there thought and showed typical Asian attitude and commitment fighting all the way through the second set. Yun-Chieh and Lo got the break at 2-2 but again Mia and Anais fought hard to break, hold, break again to lead 5-3; it was then down to Mia to serve out the match! The first 2 points were shaky but Mia kept her cool and implemented what we had talked about after her singles to stay patient and make her opponent play more balls. She was as solid as a rock from the back which set Anais up to finish the volley on 2 occasions and the other 2 points were won through their opponent’s unforced errors – 6-4, 6-3! It was a great win, a superb performance from both girls and Mia showed huge character to come back from a tough singles loss and put in such a professional performance. Mia and Anais have formed a great team, their communication and encouragement for each other was first class and they’ll be ready to take on the 2nd seeds tomorrow.

After debriefing, showering and changing we all got the bus back at 6pm and had a great dinner together in the hotel restaurant.

Schedule for tomorrow:

Anais Nussaume (FRA) & Mia Smith (GBR) vs Ah Song (KOR) & Claudia Williams (NZL) – 4th round on, not before 2.30pm

Monday 3rd October 2011

The rain came down for the whole day today which meant that all of the girl’s 1st round matches were cancelled. For almost all of the girls that meant the day was a complete washout but we had other ideas!

As Mia was scheduled for 4th round on today we decided to have a later breakfast at 8.30am and get the 9.30am bus to the centre. Almost as soon as we arrived the rain came down so we delayed our physical and pre-match warm up until the referee had decided what he was going to do. The club we’re at looks brand new and they’ve had the foresight to build 4 out of the 9 courts under cover so it meant that half of the boy’s 1st round matches could continue. When the new schedule came out Mia was still scheduled for not before 1pm on one of the open courts but the rain was still coming down and it didn’t look like it would ever let up.

With all of the covered courts being used for matches we decided to use an indoor badminton centre next door to do some fitness but just as we decided to do that we noticed that play had stopped on one of the covered courts. Water was rolling on to it from the open court next to it; it was bad enough not to have matches on it but the water wasn’t actually on the playing surface so we grabbed Claudia and jumped on to train. While all of the other girls either went back to the hotel or sat in the clubhouse doing nothing we had a great 2 hour training session going through everything we needed to prepare ourselves for tomorrow. At 3pm it was back on the bus to the hotel and then straight into the ‘gym’ to do some physical work. The gym is very basic but has a bike, running machine, free weights and area to do core / stretching. Mia completed a great 35 minute session and then had a thorough stretch out to finish off our training day.

We then played a bit of table tennis before relaxing before dinner. We had our standard BBQ chicken and rice with Anais and her coach Pierre and once we’d let it go down we were back on the table tennis table again battling it out against each other!! It ended up being a very productive day and I’m so glad Mia is not one of those girls that would have taken the easy option of using the weather as an excuse to sit around all day doing nothing.

Schedule for tomorrow:

Yuna Usui (JPN) (UNR) vs Mia Smith (GBR) (UNR) – 1st round on at 9.30am

Yun-Chieh Chang (TPE) & Lo Shao-Chi (TPE) vs Anais Nussaume (FRA) & Mia Smith (GBR) – 4th round on, not before 1.30pm

Sunday 2nd October 2011

Final day of preparation today before the main draw kicks off tomorrow!

We had a nice lie in this morning as the opening ceremony was at 7pm and we didn’t fancy being on site from 8am to 8pm! We had our standard ‘Bread and Eggs’ for breakfast at 8.30am and then, while Mia got stuck into some school work, I tried to catch up on some sleep! I’ve struggled to sleep these past couple of nights and last night I slept from 9.30pm until 1am but then couldn’t get back to sleep until 7am – good job “A Few Good Men” was on TV – I must have only watched that 100 times!!

We got the 12pm bus to the tennis centre and then trained from 1pm until 3pm with Claudia Williams – she’s the girl from New Zealand that I worked with at the Nottingham ITFs in April and asked if she could join up with us for these couple of weeks. It was a good training session and it gave Mia a chance to train with a player ranked 400 ITF which gave her great preparation for her main draw match tomorrow.

….

Mia in action today

After lunch Mia signed in and then it was back on court at 4.30pm with Mia’s newly found doubles partner Anais Nussaume from France. Like yesterday the second session of the day was better than the first; Mia and Anais trained well and finished off with 3 service games each which was the perfect end to Mia’s preparations. After the session Mia had a long stretch out and then we both showered and changed so we looked respectable for the opening ceremony!!

I really wish the tournaments in the UK would make as much of an effort as they do abroad when it comes to opening ceremonies. We only had a few brief speeches from sponsors and the head of the federation before all of the players and coaches had a fantastic (and free!) dinner together.

By 8pm we were back on the bus and it was then off to bed for Mia as soon we got back to the hotel to get ready for her match tomorrow.

Schedule for tomorrow:

Yuna Usui (JPN) (UNR) vs Mia Smith (GBR) (UNR) – 4th round on, not before 1pm

Saturday 1st October 2011

It was a tough day today as we got used to the heat and humidity but we got a lot of work done and we were both very happy with how it all went.

After a restless night (partly due to going to bed far too early) I met Mia (who had slept like a baby apparently!) for breakfast at 7.20am which consisted of the Vietnamese classic of Eggs and Bread – you can have your eggs however you like them and they’re cooked right in front of you so it makes for a great start to the day! At 8am we were aboard the bus again for the 40 minute journey to the tennis centre and at 9am we were on the basketball court starting our normal 30 minute warm up. By 9.30am we were both absolutely dripping with sweat and the humidity was already taking its toll. From 9.30am to 11am we were on court hitting balls and the session content was completely down to what Mia wanted to do as she started her preparations for Monday. It was a good session and her level improved a lot as she got more used to the humidity and the bouncy court surface. At 11am, having drunk over 3 litres of water since breakfast, we had a break, changed and got some lunch.

This event is Mia’s first U18 ITF event and the experience she’s going to gain from it, apart from being invaluable, will set her up for the all the junior events she’s going to play going forwards. When you look at the current best female players in the world (with the exception of the Williams Sisters) they all started their ITF careers from a young age and by the age of 14 / 15 they all had a wealth of knowledge about themselves and their tennis that can only be gained from being on the road and being in uncomfortable situations away from your home country. Mia’s worked hard over the summer and her game is now at a level where she’s able to compete with the likes of players in these events so she’s mix in the ITFs and Tennis Europe events throughout the winter months.

After lunch Mia was back on court at 1.15pm to play points against a Japanese girl whose coach I got chatting to this morning. The girls had a competitive set which lasted just over an hour and Mia came out on top taking it 6-4 – she played well throughout and developed almost every area we worked on this morning so I was a very happy coach ?. Mia’s work wasn’t quite done there though as she had to sprint to chase down the bus which had left a little earlier than scheduled! Thankfully her speed work throughout September paid off and she managed to get there just in time which saved us having to wait at the centre for another 3 hours!!

It was nice to have a bit of a break before dinner but I didn’t really get to relax as I had to move rooms twice before I could settle in and unpack – all sorted now though and hopefully I’ll be in this room for the rest of the week.

We had a solid dinner of chicken, steamed rice and steamed vegetables but it was tempting to choose some fish from one of the dozen or so fish tanks by the side of the restaurant (NOT!). I’ll let you into one of the dishes on the menu each day so you can get a feel for what we’re looking at – and these are all genuine!

Interesting dish of the day: Boiled Snake’s Head! (Somehow I think we’ll be staying with chicken filet and rice each day!)

As there was no girls qualifying due to lack of entries and only 14 boys in the qualies there are no matches tomorrow which means we’ve got loads of courts to practise on all day as we make our final preparations before round 1 on Monday.

Friday 30th September 2011 – Day 1.5!!

I suppose officially we’re now at the end of the 2nd day of the trip but as most of yesterday was spent travelling I didn’t think it was worth devoting a whole Blog to 12 hours on a plane!

I’m joined on this trip by Mia Smith and we left Heathrow at 11.30am on Thursday afternoon after a 2 hour journey across London including just over an hour on the underground with all of the daily commuters – I don’t know how people can do that everyday!

Our first flight was to Singapore and it was on a massive Airbus 380 – the third or forth time I’ve flown on one of those and they really are the best way to fly (would be nice if I could afford a First Class Suite though!). The 13 hour flight went quite quickly but the films weren’t great; I watched Bridesmaids as a few people had said it was funny but I thought it was awful! After a 2 hour stopover in Singapore we were back on our next flight to Ho Chi Minh City. That flight literally flew by (!) as we both slept the whole way only to wake for some scrambled eggs for breakfast.

We landed in Vietnam just before 11am and by 11.45am we had gone through Passport Control, collected our bags and were outside trying to find the guy who was supposed to be collecting us. After a few phone calls to the tournament director (which must have cost a fortune!) we met the driver and he took us through Ho Chi Minh City to our hotel for the week. Driving in Vietnam is always an interesting experience and I have no idea how there aren’t more accidents with the millions of motorbikes weaving in and out of all the cars trying to find a small space.

After checking into the hotel we just had time to unpack before getting the 3pm bus to the tennis centre where we managed to get in a really good 45-50 minute session before it got dark. I think it’s always important to get the flight and travel out of your system as early as possible so no matter how far I travel I like to get a hit in on the day I arrive at a tournament – it also helps to keep you awake a little longer too!! At 6pm we headed back to the hotel, had an early dinner and went off to our rooms for an early night around 8pm.

More on the country, the tournament and Mia tomorrow!