Thursday 8th October 2015
It was another good day here in Colombo which saw Toby win both his singles and doubles matches to progress into the 1/4 Finals of both events.
We’ve now been here for one week and even though Toby has only completed 3 matches due to the rain, we both feel as though he’s dealing with the heat and humidity better than a lot of the other players. This time last year Toby struggled in the conditions and his inexperience in this type of environment really showed in qualifying, but a year on he’s a completely different player who has learnt to accept things outside of his control.
We had a bit of a lie in this morning which should have meant more sleep but I was rudely awoken at 1.30am by my 21 month old son who somehow managed to call me from my wife’s phone . . . twice! It’s not actually the first time that he’s done that so I didn’t panic too much but it was the first time when I’ve been away on a trip! So . . . after a broken night’s sleep I met Toby for breakfast at 8.30am and then at 9.45am we headed to the club to warm up for our practice court at 10.30am. The last two days have been very hot and now that we’re on the hard courts the heat is even more intense. It’s therefore important to make sure that each minute on court is valued and that we’re not wasting any time discussing things that can be talked about off the court or sitting resting in the sun too much. Toby’s pre-match hit lasted around 35 minutes and included him warming up everything he needed to plus a few specific drills based on the opponent he was about to play.
Once we were finished we went straight into the restaurant to be in the air conditioning and also to get some lunch. The next few hours were spent eating, drinking, watching Ondrej in his singles match (as if Toby won then he would play the winner) and also checking the score on Toby’s court continuously so he knew when to warm up!
At just after 2pm Toby went on to play Vishnu Puyalraj from India who had won through 3 rounds of Qualifying and also won his first round match yesterday. We watched a lot of the match yesterday so knew what we were up against but when Toby started the match he got his tactics a bit back to front! The plan was to dictate the points but also stay solid for the first 3 games to see if Vishnu would raise his level. However, Toby went out like a man possessed and tried to blow his opponent off the court with hard flat hitting down the middle of the court which Vishnu found comfortable to deal with! After 13 unforced errors in the first 3 games Toby found himself 1-2* down but to his credit (and with a little encouragement from me) he worked out what was going wrong and changed his hitting from hard and flat down the middle of the court to heavier and wider to push his opponent off the court more. That tactical change led to Toby breaking his opponent straight back and then winning the next 4 games to take the first set 6-2 in 55 minutes.
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Toby serving at the start of the 2nd set
Toby maintained his discipline in the second set and broke his opponent 3 times whilst not facing a single break point on his own serve to take the set 6-0. It was another good performance from Toby and even more satisfying that he was mentally switched on to change his tactics when needed – if he hadn’t made those changes early on then his opponent might have grown in confidence and gone on to make life very difficult.
As the conditions were very hot and humid it was imperative that Toby ate and drunk enough in the hour and 25 minutes between when his singles match finished and when he needed to go onto court to finish his doubles match. The only problem was that nobody likes eating or drinking a lot when they’ve just been running around a court for the last hour and a half! He was very professional though and had a good plate of pasta as well as a litre of electrolyte drink before he needed to start warming up again.
At 5pm Toby and Ondrej resumed their match with Avindra Perera and Vibudha Wijebandara from Sri Lanka at *1-1 in the second set with Ondrej serving. The boys started well and held and broke to take a *3-1 lead but the Sri Lankans then played a very good game to break Toby’s serve to put the match back on-serve. Players can often let their heads drop at that stage as it’s a big game when serving with a 3-1 lead, but to their credit Toby and Ondrej responded well to break straight back after a Sudden Death Deuce point and then go on to win the next two games to take the match 6-1, 6-2.
After the match we checked the schedule for tomorrow and then headed back to the hotel to have a recovery session in the pool. We then had about 45 minutes to relax in the apartment before it was the time we’d been waiting for all week – the return of the buffet dinner!!
After dinner our attention returned to the tournament and preparing to take on Toby’s doubles partner in the singles 1/4 Final and the number 2 seeds in the doubles 1/4 Final.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Toby Huffer (GBR) (2265) vs (3) Ondrej Styler (CZE) (965) – 2nd match after 8.30am
Toby Huffer (GBR) & Ondrej Styler (CZE) vs (2) Christian Cummings (IND) & Rishi Reddy (IND) – 4th match after 8.30am
