Sunday 17th October 2021
We had another great training day today and Matthew’s preparations are now complete, ready for the start of the Main Draw.
This morning was a little more relaxed than yesterday with us getting up around 7:30am and leaving the hotel for the courts at 9:15am. Isla then warmed up at 9:45am ready for her 10am practice session with Victoria. For the session we were also joined by Macy Denny-Richards from the Soto Tennis Academy and Mariia Goreniuk from Ukraine. All four girls worked very hard individually but also trained well as a team with the older girls supporting the younger ones throughout.
Matthew then came on court at 11am and we had a really good hour of training together. We were fortunate to get a full court for the whole of the session and that meant we could work on a few specific areas of Matthew’s game and then finish with some full court points.
From today the club started serving lunch on-site so we all ate there and relaxed in the shade until it was time to warm up for our afternoon training sessions.
By the time we went on court at 2pm the temperature had really heated up to around 30°C but both Isla and Matthew are quite accustomed to it now having been out here training for the last few days. Matthew had another good hour with Zangar from 2-3pm and, as they are both competing in the Main Draw, they played a lot of points:
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Isla was then joined by fellow Brit Jess Morrison and they shared the court with Macy and me from 3-4pm. Just like in Matthew’s session, our focus was on point play and adapting our games to both our opponent and the different conditions at either end of the court.
After we were finished we checked that Matthew was signed in with the referee and then headed back to the hotel for another cool down and stretch out in the gym.
Our plans for dinner tonight were to meet up with Gemma and Macy from the Soto Tennis Academy team and go to ‘Positano’ for some good Italian food but, as we discovered when we walked to the restaurant, most of the restaurants are closed on Sundays! Well, that actually was a bit of a blessing in disguise as we stumbled upon a restaurant called Mr. Kale and the food was amazing!
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While we were at dinner the draw came out and Matthew found out that he is not playing singles until Tuesday. There might still be doubles tomorrow for Isla and Matthew though so we’ll wait and see!
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