Bermuda U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 4

Tuesday 25^th June 2013

It was a tough end to the event here in Bermuda today as Alex and Harry lost in the first round of their doubles.

Following Alex’s defeat in the singles yesterday we decided to go straight into a normal training week from today which includes a full on court session in the morning, a strength and conditioning session and his doubles this afternoon. Watching the juniors over the years it is obvious that very few of them train as they should do when they are knocked out of the singles whereas the senior players make sure that keep up to date with their physical training even when they are still in the singles and doubles.

My day started today with some tough hill sprints on the road going down to the beach – the first 5 hurt but the next 15 hurt even more!! I then met Alex for breakfast at 8am and we got the 9am shuttle to the club. Once we arrived it was straight onto court to warm up before we had a good session from 10-11.15am. We had two main focuses for the session; firstly we wanted to address issues that Alex had on his groundstrokes following his singles match and then for the second half of the session we focussed on Alex’s volleys and doubles tactics. By the end of the session we were both soaked in sweat but instead of taking the easy option and having a break we went straight into Alex’s lower body strength and conditioning programme. It was quite a tough session but Alex completed it well and at 12pm it was time for some well-deserved lunch – unfortunately I had to wait for all of the players to have theirs before I could get my free lunch!

After lunch we chilled out watching Wimbledon in the player’s lounge and also some of the main draw matches before it was time to warm up again for our pre-match session with Harry Copley. We were supposed to hit from 2-2.30pm but it appeared that a court booking today wasn’t really valid and according to the referee the priority went to anyone who was playing next match on – an interesting concept and the first I’d ever experienced!! The boys however managed to get on court at around 2.45pm and had a good session which included some doubles specific work with me at the end.

At 4.15pm Alex and Harry went on to play Courtney Murphy & Myles Schalet from America. Alex and Harry started well and played some good doubles but their opponents were looking very sharp at the net and at *1-2 they broke Alex to take control of the set. Harry held serve at *1-4 and then the boys saved a set point at sudden death deuce on Alex’s serve but Courtney and Myles stepped up their level to close out the set 6-3.

In the second set Alex and Harry looked more confident and made less cheap errors but Courtney and Myles played some very tight doubles as they broke Harry at 2-2 and then Alex at 2-4 on their way to taking the match 6-3, 6-2.

Another tough loss but like with the singles yesterday there were lots of positives to take from the match as well as lots of areas to develop and improve before Alex’s next event.

Tomorrow we will train at the club during the day before trying to get on an earlier flight home in the evening (hopefully without having to pay a huge change fee!). It’s been a good week in terms of Alex developing and also identifying areas of his game that need to improve and if he can continue to work hard in the way that he has been, then the results will come very soon.