Bahamas U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 1

Sunday 22nd November 2015

Toby Huffer and I had a long day of travel yesterday as we made our way from London to the small island of the Bahamas in the Caribbean. After the 10 hour flight we got to the hotel at around 4pm and then managed to use one of the tennis courts in a neighbouring hotel to hit on for a little while before it got dark!

This morning when we woke up at 6am the weather was looking nice and we were looking forward to a full day of training but when we arrived at the National Tennis Centre the sky suddenly turned rather dark! We managed to go through our full physical warm up and hit for around 30 minutes before a big storm hit us.

Rather than wait 2 hours for the next shuttle bus we decided to call a taxi with four other players and head back to the hotel. When we arrived we went straight into the gym to go through Toby’s travelling programme and despite not being able to do as much as we wanted on court this morning we still felt as though we’d put in a good mornings training.

At 11am we walked out of the gym and much to Toby’s delight he was able to watch the whole of the Tottenham vs West Ham game before we met up again for lunch.

When I first looked into booking the hotel the tournament were quoting a rate that was for room only but for just $3 more I managed to get a deal direct with the hotel to include all of our meals and drinks – sometimes it is worth spending the extra time to see if any special deals are available!

Breakfast and lunch at the hotel are in the Market Place restaurant which is a buffet but for dinner you can either book one of the other 6 restaurants or you can go for the buffet again. Last night we had the buffet (as all of the restaurants were fully booked) which was very average so today I booked up all the restaurants we thought we might use for the whole week.

At 3.15pm we got the second shuttle bus of the day over to the club and then had a rain-free training session from 4.15 – 5.30pm. The courts out here are quite bouncy but as we’re at sea level we don’t have any altitude to deal with which makes it much easier to adjust to the conditions. Out here in the Caribbean they also tend to use Penn tennis balls which are a little lighter than the normal Wilson US Open or Head ATP balls that are often used in ITF events. That is something else that takes a little adjustment but after an hour or two you soon get used to them.

At 5.30pm Toby was asked by the referee to be a player representative for the draw which was good as we got to see who he was playing straight after the draw was made rather than have to wait all evening for the draw to be released!

We then got a taxi back to the hotel and got ready for a superb dinner in Aqua – the Italian restaurant at the hotel that we couldn’t get into last night!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Toby Huffer (GBR) (1588) vs (3) Ryan Goetz (USA) (618) – 1st match at 9am