Edinburgh U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 1

Sunday 5^th July 2015

Following an excellent week of training and competing in La Manga, which saw Toby Huffer reach the final of the Men’s singles and the Men’s doubles (with me!) we left Murcia on Friday afternoon and headed straight to Edinburgh for the U18 ITF event. As we boarded the plane in Spain Toby was 3^rd / 4^th on the Qualifying list but by the time we landed at Gatwick he had moved up into the Main Draw which meant that he could have a well-deserved rest day yesterday after playing 10 matches in 5 days.

I’ve been coming to the ITF and Tennis Europe events in Edinburgh since 2004 and you can almost guarantee that it will rain at some point during each day of the tournament!! It rained yesterday, which caused the majority of the play to go indoors, but when we woke this morning the weather was looking brilliant.

So that we could get a long training session in this morning we got the 6.36am bus from outside our Bed & Breakfast and starting warming up at the Craiglockhart Tennis Centre at 6.45am. We then trained on one court from 7.15am to 8am and then went over to the back courts to continue until matches started at 9am. I think the training and matches on the red clay last week have really helped to develop Toby’s game and if he can continue to improve over the next couple of weeks on clay then it’ll be a great start to the summer.

After training we booked practice for this afternoon and then headed back to the B&B for breakfast.

There wasn’t much to do between the morning session and our afternoon session so we just mainly relaxed at the B&B and got some lunch from the local Zizzi’s – check out how cheap it was for both of us!!

Once we had told the waitress there was a mistake we ended up paying just over £10 which wasn’t bad for two big meals and our drinks!

Our training session this afternoon was indoors from 3.15pm until 4.45pm – we decided to go indoors rather than wait to see if a clay court would become available after matches so that Toby was used to both surfaces in case it rained. We drilled for around 45 minutes until Toby was comfortable on the surface and then we went into a short set to 4 which saw Toby take me apart 4-2!

Following the training session Toby signed in and then, just as the rain started to fall, we got on the bus back to the B&B.

The rain continued on and off for the rest of the evening but it didn’t stop us walking into Edinburgh City centre to have dinner at ASK. We tried to get a bus on the way back but due to it being a Sunday the service was very sporadic so we walked almost the whole way and tried as hard as we could to avoid the rain!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Toby Huffer (GBR) (2053) vs Jack Draper (GBR) (1446) – 5^th match after 9am