Wednesday 13^th April 2011

The day started a little differently today as we were woken at 4am by the Fire Alarm going off in the Travelodge and then spent the next 45 minutes waiting on the pavement outside the hotel as the Fire Brigade arrived and eventually announced it as a False Alarm!!

We got up for the second time at 8am, had breakfast in the room and made our way to the tennis centre at 9am. Claudia was the first to practise so we warmed up in the gym for half an hour and then got on court to play some practise points out with Farah Abdel-Aziz who was with me in Kenya. Claudia worked hard and addressed a lot of the points that we raised from her match yesterday. She’s experienced a problem that a lot of players find when they’re on the road for a long period of time and that’s when they get towards the end of the trip players tend to lose a little focus and intensity and really need to spend some time working on their game before competing again. I know of a few players who play 30+ ITFs per year and it really doesn’t help with their game development if it’s only to chase points and not to improve as a player.

As Claudia was finishing her session Dave arrived and started his warm up so I went straight over onto the next court to get him ready for his doubles match. He warmed up thoroughly and then spent some time developing his game, working mainly on his serve and returns before playing some points out. We all then had lunch and discussed the plan for the afternoon – Dave was just waiting for his court to become available for his doubles match while Claudia went into the gym to go through her strength and conditioning programme. It’s been a little surprising this week how few players have actually been in the gym whether it was for a cardio warm up, to do any injury prevention exercises or to follow their strength and conditioning programme. That’s always the major difference between the junior and senior tour, how much work outside of their on court training the players complete on a day to day basis. If the juniors did get used to it at an early age it would be a much easier transition into the senior game and the demands that are placed on the body.

Dave and Oliver Plaskett went on court at around 2.30pm and they were taking on 6^th seeds Toby Mitchell and Toby Martin from Bath. From the start it was obvious that one team had played / trained together before and one had not. The Bath boys were much sharper at the net and took their chances when they came up. They broke early in the first set and then again at 5-2 to take the set 6-2 and the pattern continued in the second as Dave and Oliver found themselves 6-2, 5-2 down. They then fought hard, served and returned better to hold, break and hold again to level the set at 5-5. Unfortunately at 5-6 they were broken again and went down 6-2, 7-5, not bad for a team who were playing together for the first time but both boys knew they had not performed well.

Again it was good to go through the match immediately with Dave and write some notes that we can look back at next week when we travel to Bosnia for the ITF Grade 4 event.

I’m staying over tonight to watch some of the matches tomorrow and then it’ll be back home for the weekend and back on the road again on Monday.

Tuesday 12^th April 2011

It was a long cold day in Nottingham today and two tough singles matches made things even more difficult.

The day started with an early practise for Claudia who was taking on Bolton’s Sabrina Federici. We had a good warm up and talked about some match goals before she took to the court at 9am. The match started well with Claudia breaking Sabrina in the first game and despite giving up the break straight away she broke again to lead 2-1. Sabrina then upped her game and found a better depth and penetration than Claudia could and because of that she won the next 10 games in a row going from 2-1 down to 6-2, 5-0 up. Claudia kept fighting even though she was down and at 5-0 she produced the kind of tennis you’d expect from someone ranked 400 in the world. She held at 5-0 then saved 9 match points in the next two games and it seemed as though she’d figured out exactly what she needed to do to come back. Unfortunately at 3-5 she played a poor first 3 points of the game and couldn’t come back again from 40-0 down so ended up going down 6-2, 6-3. A disappointing match for Claudia, there were lots of positives to take from it, she did perform better than last week and Sabrina did play a very solid match.

As soon as Claudia had finished I went straight indoors to be on court with Dave Hodgetts to get him ready for his first round match with Jack Findel-Hawkins. Dave was seeded 16 but Jack has been playing domestically very well this year and was coming into the match full of confidence. Dave was broken in the first game and struggled until 3-4 to really make any in-roads on Jack’s serve. Dave couldn’t get the break but was getting closer at 3-4 and at 4-5 but lost the first set 6-4. The second was similar to the first with Dave getting broken in the first game but he was then broken again at 3-1 and didn’t get the break back until he was 5-2 down. He then played a great two games to keep himself in the match but Jack played a solid game at 5-4 to take the match 6-4, 6-4.

After lunch I went back on court with Claudia and worked on the specifics from her match for an hour and then I met up with Dave to go through his match. It’s always good to review matches as soon as possible and then try to either get on court to work on tactical / technical areas or set some goals for the rest of the week so the players can measure their improvement.

It was then back to the hotel to get changed before we went out to meet up with Naomi and the Bromley Team and the Portuguese Team for Dinner at Bella Italia (with a nice 40% off voucher!!). Unfortunately after that the day got considerably worse as Chelsea lost to Man United in the Champions League!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Dave Hodgetts (GBR) & Oliver Plaskett (GBR) vs (6) Toby Martin & Toby Mitchell (GBR) – 4^th round after 9am, N.B. 12.30pm

Monday 11^th April

Tough day today as both players fell at the last hurdle in qualifying but a couple of Lucky Loser places have given them another chance.

After driving home on Friday I was making my way back up the M1 on Sunday evening to join up with Ellie Murphy and Anouska Newman. We had dinner yesterday evening in Nottingham and met up with Lewis Whiteley who is back competing after a long lay-off with injury so hopefully this is the start of a good year for Lewis.

Today started with breakfast in our rooms as we didn’t fancy paying £13.95 at the hotel (!) and then we made our way through the Monday morning rush hour traffic into Nottingham arriving at the Centre at 8.30am. One were the first ones in the gym to warm up for 25 minutes before hitting for 30 minutes on court in preparation for both matches which were first on at 10am. The girls then completed their pre-match sheets and we spoke briefly about goals they wanted to achieve as well as how they were going to compete today before they went on.

Both matches were on at the same time and it helped that the matches were next to each other but it was still tough to follow what was going on in every point played. Anouska’s match against Mariella Blackwell started well for the first two games but then she struggled with consistency and very soon found herself going from 1-0 up to 6-1, 2-0 down. She continued to fight hard but struggled to find a consistent way to construct the points and that made life for Mariella quite straightforward taking the match 6-1, 6-1. As I said last week Anouska has been working hard on changes to her game recently and it’s made competing very difficult, she’ll keep at it though and I think by the summer things will be firing again.

As one match was moving at a rapid pace Ellie’s match with Natalie Syme was the complete opposite. Ellie took the first set 6-4 after breaking and holding at 4-4 and looked in control throughout as she kept a good depth and didn’t allow Natalie to move up the court to get a strike in. The second set was a different story as Natalie upped her consistency and managed to neutralise Ellie’s best shot leading to her forcing more and then missing. Natalie took a 4-1 lead before Ellie broke and held to make it 4-3 and at this stage I thought Ellie was right back in the set but two cheap games gave Natalie the set 6-3. The third followed the same pattern as the second with Natalie playing solid and Ellie forcing more and more to try to win the point early resulting in a huge amount of unforced errors. Ellie was 5-2 down when she broke serve but couldn’t serve consistently enough to keep her in the match and after just over 2 and a half hours she lost 4-6, 6-3, 6-3.

As soon as Ellie had showered and changed we headed off site to get some lunch and on return we found out that Anouska had got a Lucky Loser and Ellie was now 2^nd reserve for one so things were starting to look up for both of them. While the girls were completing their post match sheets I jumped on court for 45 minutes with Dave Hodgetts for his second session of the day before he signed in ready for tomorrow. After going through the learning points from both of the girls matches we took to the court again at 4.30pm and spent almost an hour and a half doing basket drills to targets to get their matches out of their system and also to work on the specific learning points from their matches. During the session Ellie got called to the referee’s office and was told she’s now in the main draw so it was even more reason to finish the drilling and be prepared for her match tomorrow.

We left site at 6.15pm and drove back to the hotel to shower and change and got back into Nottingham for just after 7pm (great effort from the girls to turn it around that quick!!). Unfortunately we missed meeting up with the Portuguese team but still had a great dinner and then finished the day by picking Frankie up from the train station to make the team complete!

Tomorrow I hand the team over to rookie coach Naomi Cavaday who’ll be looking after them for the rest of the week and I’ll be just focusing on Dave Hodgetts and Kiwi Claudia Williams.

Schedule for tomorrow:

(WC) Sabrina Federici (GBR) vs (4) Claudia Williams (443) (NZL) – 1^st round on at 9am

(16) David Hodgetts (565) (GBR) vs (WC) Jack Findel-Hawkins (GBR) (1790) – 3^rd round after 9am, N.B. 11am