Sunday 2nd October 2011
Final day of preparation today before the main draw kicks off tomorrow!
We had a nice lie in this morning as the opening ceremony was at 7pm and we didn’t fancy being on site from 8am to 8pm! We had our standard ‘Bread and Eggs’ for breakfast at 8.30am and then, while Mia got stuck into some school work, I tried to catch up on some sleep! I’ve struggled to sleep these past couple of nights and last night I slept from 9.30pm until 1am but then couldn’t get back to sleep until 7am – good job “A Few Good Men” was on TV – I must have only watched that 100 times!!
We got the 12pm bus to the tennis centre and then trained from 1pm until 3pm with Claudia Williams – she’s the girl from New Zealand that I worked with at the Nottingham ITFs in April and asked if she could join up with us for these couple of weeks. It was a good training session and it gave Mia a chance to train with a player ranked 400 ITF which gave her great preparation for her main draw match tomorrow.
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Mia in action today
After lunch Mia signed in and then it was back on court at 4.30pm with Mia’s newly found doubles partner Anais Nussaume from France. Like yesterday the second session of the day was better than the first; Mia and Anais trained well and finished off with 3 service games each which was the perfect end to Mia’s preparations. After the session Mia had a long stretch out and then we both showered and changed so we looked respectable for the opening ceremony!!
I really wish the tournaments in the UK would make as much of an effort as they do abroad when it comes to opening ceremonies. We only had a few brief speeches from sponsors and the head of the federation before all of the players and coaches had a fantastic (and free!) dinner together.
By 8pm we were back on the bus and it was then off to bed for Mia as soon we got back to the hotel to get ready for her match tomorrow.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Yuna Usui (JPN) (UNR) vs Mia Smith (GBR) (UNR) – 4th round on, not before 1pm
