Nottingham U18 ITF Grade 4 (week 2), Day 1

Monday 18th April 2016

After 4 days of training down in Kent, Toby Huffer and I drove back up the M1 yesterday to prepare for week 2 of the U18 ITF Grade 4s in Nottingham.

The weather was somewhat better this morning than it was last week so I decided to get up early and have a run along the canal before meeting Toby for breakfast at 7am. We then headed over to the tennis centre at 8am, warmed up from 8.30-9am and had a good training session from 9am until the matches started at 10.30am. It was thankfully dry for the whole of our session but rarely is there a day at the Nottingham Tennis Centre when the wind isn’t blowing! Still … it gave us a good opportunity to do some drilling and point play in similar conditions to which Toby will face tomorrow.

After training we cooled down and then watched some of the last round of Qualifying matches before heading to Sainsbury’s to get some lunch. It was then back to the hotel for a couple of hours to relax and prepare for our second session of the day.

Last Monday Toby had a good practice set with Ewen Lumsden and today he fancied his chances against me! We went through our physical warm-ups from 3-3.30pm and then after a 15 minute hit we went straight into a set. The first game was a bit of an epic but after 4/5 deuces I managed to break Toby’s serve and then I scraped another break at 3-1 to take a 4-1 lead. Toby responded well and dominated the next two games to get the score back to 4-3 but, after the next two games went with serve, I was prevented from serving out the set by the next players who had the court booked at 4.30pm. It was a good quality practice and will set Toby is good stead for his opening match tomorrow.

Once Toby had signed in for both singles and doubles we headed back to the hotel and then had a quick turnaround for dinner as Toby was very keen to be finished by 7.45pm so he could watch Spurs play Stoke.

While we were at dinner the draw came out:

All the way up here yesterday I had Toby in my ear describing the Leicester vs West Ham game (and he didn’t hold back on his opinions of the referring decisions!) and now I’m sitting next to him in a pub listening to him nervously cheers Spurs on!! Thankfully we’re only watching the first half!

 Schedule for tomorrow:

(7) Johan Garpered (SWE) (458) vs Toby Huffer (GBR) (1164) – 2nd match after 9am