Wednesday 20th October 2021
After 7 days of learning, developing, adapting to new environments and playing some of the best tennis I’ve seen him play, unfortunately Matthew’s time in the Gran Canaria U14 TE came to an end with loses in both the singles and the doubles today.
It was a standard start to the day; up at 6am, leave the hotel at 7:15am, physical warm-up in the dark at 7:30am, start hitting in the dark at 7:45am and be totally warmed up and ready to go by 8:20am. Today, Matthew had a great practice with Arabella Loftus from the Swansea RPDC team while Isla trained with Paula Gatell Pelaez from Spain.
At around 10am Matthew went on court 4 to face 4th seed Zangar Nurlanuly from Kazakhstan. As I said in previous blogs, Matthew has been training with Zangar and they played a practice set on Friday but we both knew that we were going to see a different opponent today than we have done in practice.
Matthew struggled to find his range at the start of the match which led to too many unforced errors and saw him go 3-0 down quite quickly. He then held serve which settled some early nerves but Zangar was finding a very good depth of shot and giving up very few cheap points. At *2-5 down Matthew had a long service game but eventually lost it after the second deuce which gave the first set to Zangar 6-2.
For almost the whole of the first set Matthew was playing tentative tennis (which has been unlike him over the past week) but at the start of the second set he raised his level and started to play a much more aggressive game. He went 2-0 up straight away and, even though Zangar broke Matthew’s serve to level the set at 2-2, Matthew responded once again to break back and regain the lead. The boy’s both exchanged a break and a hold each and at 4-4 I was thinking that Matthew was in control of the set but 3 unforced errors in each of the next two games resulted in Zangar taking the match 6-2, 6-4.
There’s definitely no shame in losing to a good opponent but speaking after the match both Matthew and I agreed that he didn’t quite get the balance of play right today and that led to a performance that neither of us expected.
Once we had debriefed, Matthew headed back to the hotel to refuel and recover while Isla and I stayed on-site to train individually and then with Victoria Herrera. Isla had another good hour and a half of training which meant that in total she’d been on court for around 3 hours today which is more good experience in the bank!
After returning to the hotel for lunch and to complete some school work it wasn’t long before we were heading back out at 5pm for Matthew’s 2nd round doubles match.
Today the tournament was using a second site for the matches (probably as they didn’t finish last night until 11pm!) and so we drove the short 10 minute journey to the Tamarasit Club where they had 3 clay courts and a really nice ‘club’ atmosphere.
Matthew and Oliver took to the court at just before 7pm to take on No.1 seeds Jamie Mackenzie from New Zealand & Flynn Thomas from Switzerland.
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The view over 2 of the 3 clay courts at the Tamarasit Club
During the first set the number 1 seeds played some very good doubles and, after taking a 2-0 lead, they comfortably won the set 6-2. However, being the fighters that Matthew and Oliver are, they weren’t about to roll over and give the match to their opponents. Despite going 2-0 down again in the 2nd set they fought back and started to control the net much better to level the score at 2-2. The next two games both went to sudden death deuce but unfortunately we couldn’t take those crucial points and once the top seeds had a 4-2 lead they didn’t look back and went on to take the match 6-2, 6-2.
Having lost two matches in one day Matthew was understandably disappointed but he should be very proud of what he’s achieved over the past 7 days having never before played an international tournament. He’s learning very fast and has a game that is full of potential so if he can gain more experience and compete in more of these types of events then the future could be very bright for him.
So … now it’s all down to Isla and her first doubles match with Victoria tomorrow!
Schedule for tomorrow:
Maria Victoria Herrera Mena (ESP) & Isla Smith (GBR) vs Alexia Paula Bastos-Sousa Betanzos (ESP) & Georgiana-Victoria Juchi (ROM) – 7th match after 8:30am (not before 5pm)
