Saturday 10th March 2012
Dave had a real battle today in his first round of qualifying but after almost 3 and a half hours play he ended up on the wrong end of the score line.
After an early breakfast we made our way to the tennis centre to warm up in the gym but were told that the gym didn’t open until 9am so we’d have to warm up on the court. It seemed a bit strange that a gym doesn’t open until 9am on a Saturday but we went straight on court and went through a thorough warm up. Dave then hit with Tom Allen from 9-9.30am where he found a great level with both his groundstrokes and his serving and looked very much ready to play by the time we finished.
We then had to wait for the first round of matches to finish which gave us both a chance to prepare for the match both in terms of preparing food / rackets / match kit etc. as well as giving us a chance to talk through our tactics for the match and set the goals that we were looking to achieve. When the score got to a set and 3-0 on Dave’s court we headed into the gym so that Dave had enough time to go through his physical warm up and then we did some intense movement work to get Dave sharp and focused ready to play.
At just after 11.30am Dave went on court to face Imran Aswat and having played him at the back end of last year he knew that it was going to be a tough match. Dave was broken at *1-1 in the first set and then really struggled to break back despite being up in a lot of returning games. It was Dave’s inconsistency that was hurting him a lot more than the winners / forcing shots that Imran was hitting and that really cost him the first set (6-2). Imran had only hit 4 winners / forcing shots in the whole of the first set compared to Dave’s 10 but the unforced error count was 11 vs 23 – that really sums up the set – Dave’s aggressive balance was -13 compared to Imran’s -7.
At 4-1 down in the second set Dave fought very hard and broke for the first time which signalled a massive turning point for him. He then went on to win the next 5 games in a row with some exceptionally patient but very aggressive tennis to level the match at 1 set all. The third set started with Imran breaking Dave in the first game and at *1-3 the pattern was almost identical to the first set where Dave was over pressing a little and Imran had only hit a couple of winning shots. However unlike the first set Dave held and broke back to level the set at 3-3 and then after a couple of holds each Imran was serving to stay in the match at 5-4*. Dave had 2 match points at 40-15* but couldn’t convert them and then at Deuce in that game his left Quad cramped badly. He couldn’t receive treatment as it was cramp rather than an injury and so, as he was struggling to walk, he had to try and keep the rallies short and really go for his shots. Imran held serve at 5-4* and after another hold of serve each it was on to a tie-break to decide the match. Unfortunately by this stage Dave couldn’t sustain any kind of rally so he just had to go for his serve / first shot and then try and finish the point early off Imran’s own serve. Imran was very aware of Dave’s problems and played a solid tie-break where he was quite happy to allow Dave to go for his shots while trying to move him as much as possible. In the end after almost 3 and a half hours of play Imran won the match 6-2, 4-6, 7-6(3).
Dave’s Quad was in quite a bad way at the end of the match so he went straight to the physio for treatment before getting in the gym for a thorough cool down and stretched out.
We talked through the match later in the day while we got some food and then decided that we’d see how Dave’s Quad is tomorrow and if it’s ok then we’d train and sign in for the doubles which would start on Monday.
Hopefully Dave and Oli Hudson will get into the doubles tomorrow as that will give Dave his first Futures main draw match but we’ll have to wait until tomorrow at 12pm when the sign in closes to find out!
