Monday 10th October 2011
It was our final day of preparation today before the main draw kicks off tomorrow with Mia taking on 8th seed Hsing-Ping Cheng from Chinese Taipei.
We decided to get to the club early today to get a feel for the place and to sign in for the doubles before we went off site to train. The main club has only got 4 courts but they are very nice and I think they were brand new last year. Each court has a stand on one side which gets packed out for every match as the locals love to come and watch (especially when the Vietnamese are playing!). As well as the main courts the tournament uses another 2 courts off site for matches early in the week and they also have 4 other sites where we can practise so there’s no shortage of courts to train on.
This morning Mia trained her doubles partner Angelina Skidanova from Russia who is the only other 1998 year of birth player in the draw. The both completed a very thorough warm up and then we went through some movement and speed work before they started hitting at 10am. Both girls trained well together for an hour and fifteen minutes going through everything they wanted to work on so that they were prepared for their singles matches tomorrow. When we were finished with the singles work the girls teamed up to take on Julia and Anais to work on some much needed doubles specifics. Doubles is a very important part of these level of events; it’s not only a great opportunity to work on your serve and return but develops a lot of other skills like movement at the net and volleys that you don’t always get a chance to work on when playing singles. By midday everyone was happy and we got the bus back to the hotel for lunch.
The afternoon session was much lighter than the morning; Mia and Julia played points for a solid 45 minutes until they were both feeling prepared for their singles matches. By the time you get to the day before competing all the hard work should have been done so it’s just a chance to get sharp and make sure you’re in the right mindset to compete. Just as we were walking off the court a huge thunderstorm started so we all went back to the hotel to do some core work and then have a thorough stretch out to end a fantastic day’s preparation.
We had a couple of hours before dinner so I managed to get some work done and Mia was able to get stuck into her school work before we met back up with the other guys. We girls wanted to try somewhere different tonight (always an error!!) so we managed to find somewhere that did some pizza and pasta – everyone went for the spaghetti bolognaise apart from Pierre and Stephanie who made a huge unforced error in going for a very dodgy looking pizza!
After a stroll around the local market, meeting the locals and the girls trying to find some fake designer bags we headed back to the hotel for an early night.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Mia Smith (GBR) (UNR) vs (8) Hsing-Ping Cheng (TPE) (1047) – 5th match on, not before 1pm
