Friday 27th March 2015
Sometimes fortune favours the brave and it turned out to be a very brave call to come all the way out to the Caribbean with a player who was originally 175th alternate on the first acceptance list!
On Tuesday Toby Huffer and I flew out to Barbados to start our preparation for the U18 ITF Grade 4 that starts tomorrow. As I said earlier Toby was 175th alternate when the first acceptance list came out 3 and a half weeks ago and since then we’ve kept a very close eye on it each day. When we left London Toby was 65th alternate and this morning he was 54th alternate but it just goes to show how many players enter these types of events and don’t bother turning up. Personally I think the ITF should find a way of punishing the players that do not withdraw from tournaments but if that was the case then maybe Toby wouldn’t have got in today!
For the last 3 days we’ve been working hard to get used to the heat & humidity and also getting used to playing outdoors as we haven’t been able to do that in a while in England! We’ve also had to overcome a little sunburn (I wish players would listen when I tell them to put cream on!), some crazy mini-bus drivers and being attacked by some waves!!
On Wednesday Toby and I trained together in both the morning and afternoon, then yesterday Luke Purser joined us for another 2 good training sessions and today we just decided to have one session on court so that Toby was fresh for his matches tomorrow.
Most of this morning was spent going through the entry list for this week and next week in Trinidad to try and predict who would turn up and what chance we’d have of getting in. We both knew that it was going to be very tight and I think I said to Toby earlier that I thought he’d either just scrape into the draw or he’d be a couple of places out – as it turned out he was number 29 of 30 players that were in the 32 draw.
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So … it’s great to be back in Barbados after coming out here in 2013 with Mia Smith, Georgie Axon and Alex Hagon and I’m looking forward to Toby getting stuck into the qualifying tomorrow morning.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Romani Mayers (BAR) (UNR) vs Toby Huffer (GBR) (UNR) – 2nd match after 9am (not before 10am)
The winner to play Robert Hayden (BAR) (UNR) OR (5) Zummy Bauer (USA) (1729) – 6th match after 9am (not before 2pm)
