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:
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Boy’s Qualifying 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
