Tuesday 24th November 2015
It was a good day at the National Tennis Centre here in Nassau today and after a couple of close doubles matches in the last few weeks, Toby got a well-deserved win on the board.
As Toby and Lee Sadler were scheduled for first match at 9am today we followed the same routine as yesterday which saw us at breakfast at 6.20am and then in a taxi to the tennis centre at 7.10am. Toby and I then warmed up and had a good session for around 45 minutes which included our normal warm-up as well as lots of cross court hitting, specific work on half-volleys and first volleys and also specific doubles serving points.
After the session Toby had just under 15 minutes to get changed and have a brief chat with Lee about their tactics for the match before they went on at 9am to face Pedro Batistella from Brazil and Zaharlije-Zak Talic from Australia.
Toby served first at the start of the match and after a tight game he held serve on a Sudden Death Deuce point. Toby and Lee broke in the next game with some very good doubles play and then Lee held serve well to secure at strong 3-0* lead. The next few games went with serve and neither pair struggled to hold but at *4-2 Lee had to dig very deep on his own serve to save break points before holding to Deuce. At 5-2 our boys were looking very confident and even though they hadn’t played together before, they looked very much like they had. Zak held at 5-2 but Toby produced his best service game of the set to hold to Love to take the first set 6-3.
Having been a little flat during the first set Pedro and Zak got themselves fired up from the very first point of the second set and that resulted in them controlling the net a lot more. At *1-2 the set was still on-serve but Lee struggled during his service game and, despite saving a break point, he double faulted on the Deuce point to hand Pedro and Zak the break. Toby and Lee continued to play some good doubles in the second set and actually posted better stats than in the first set but they weren’t able to get the break back and eventually lost the set 6-3.
As I’ve said many times in my Blogs the Match Tie-break is a bit of a lottery and a lot depends on which pair takes their opportunities first. Toby and Lee came out from the change of ends at the end of the second set and showed good energy from the start of the breaker. They took a 2-0* lead but Pedro and Zak fought back to level the tie-break at 2-2. Unfazed by the mini-break back, Toby and Lee responded by winning the next 5 points in a row to take a 7-2* lead and at this stage they looked by far the better team. The 7-2* lead was extended to *9-3 and even though Pedro and Zak managed to win the next two points, Toby and Lee finished the match in style with a good cross at the net to take the win 6-3, 3-6, 10-5.
Both boys were very pleased with the win especially after they both had difficult losses yesterday in the singles.
After the match we headed back to the hotel to get some lunch but a couple of hours later we were back in a taxi heading over to the tennis centre for a practice session from 2-3pm. By this time the wind had really picked up which made the training even more challenging. It was still a good session and gave us another opportunity to develop Toby’s doubles game.
For dinner tonight we headed to the Cilantro – the Mexican restaurant at the hotel but after waiting for an hour for a couple of small burritos and a thimble full of rice we went downstairs to the buffet at The Market Place for a second course!
The hotel had a Caribbean evening on tonight in the lobby so after stretching out in the gym we got involved in the evenings entertainment!
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Caribbean night at the hotel!
Schedule for tomorrow:
Toby Huffer (GBR) & Lee Sadler (CAN) vs (3) Ryan Goetz (USA) & Adam Neff (USA) – 5th match after 9am
