Barbados U18 ITF Grade 4, Day 2

Saturday 28^th March 2015

It was long day today with numerous rain delays but unfortunately, after winning his first round match, Toby came up against a very good player in the second round.

We were up and at breakfast this morning at 7.15am before getting the 8am shuttle bus to the National Tennis Centre. Practice this morning was only on the match courts until 9am when the matches started but there are two courts across the road that are available for practice all day … the only problem is they are rather shiny and quick!

Despite the speed of the courts and the hurricane winds that were blowing diagonally across the courts, we had a good 30 minutes practice and Toby felt ready for his first round match.

There was a short rain delay during the match before Toby’s but at 10am he went on to face Romani Mayers from Barbados. The wind was very strong throughout the match which probably favoured Romani being a local player but Toby started well and raced to a 4-0 lead. Toby was broken in the next game but got back on track straight away and went on to take the set 6-1.

The second set was a little tighter as Romani found a good consistency in the opening few games but Toby stepped up his level at 1-1* to break, hold and break again to take a *4-1 lead. By this stage of the match the temperature had started to rise and even though it was still very windy it was also quite humid – not the ideal conditions for the Europeans that have been playing indoors all winter! Toby was broken again towards the end of the set but broke back immediately to take the match 6-1, 6-2.

After the match we debriefed and then got some lunch while we watched Luke Purser come through his opening match. Luke was also playing a local player and had to not only deal with the heat, humidity, gusting winds, rain breaks but also his opponents supporters who started to find their voice as the second set got closer. Luke kept his focus though and managed to come through in straight sets.

Toby’s second round match was scheduled for ‘not before 2pm’ but because of the amount of heavy downpours he didn’t end up going on until 5.30pm which was just as it was starting to get dark!

Toby was up against 5^th seed Zummy Bauer from America and having watched some of Zummy’s 1^st round match we knew that he was solid from the back of the court and took any chance possible to slice both forehands and backhands before coming into the net. Toby dealt with his opponents net rushing well for the first 4 games but at *2-2 Zummy raised his level and hit 3 winners in the next game to break Toby’s serve and take a 2-3* lead. After Zummy held serve there was a brief rain break at *2-4 which gave me a chance to discuss the match with Toby but despite holding serve when they restarted, Toby eventually lost the first set 6-3.

During the second set Toby tried to come forwards more and take the net away from Zummy but the America played a very good set and ended up hitting 16 winners and only 8 unforced errors on his way to taking it 6-1. Toby had actually played a pretty good match but unfortunately he came up against a very good player who, if he carries on playing the way he did today, is going to be very tough to beat.

The match finished at just after 7pm and after Toby had cooled down and changed we got the 7.30pm shuttle bus back to the hotel. We then met up with Luke, Alastair Grey and his coach Paul Fischer for dinner at Luigi’s. We had some good banter over dinner and Luke entertained all of us with his premature celebrations when he thought he’d worked out the answer to the riddles!!

Back to training tomorrow before doubles sign-in on Monday.