Friday 24th April 2015
We had our first full training day at the National Tennis Centre in Gaborone today but at one stage we thought some fighter jets were going to put a stop to it!
We were up for breakfast at the guesthouse at 8am this morning and then Benny arrived shortly before 9am to take us to the club. We were expecting more players to be there but apart from some junior coaching that was on a couple of the courts the rest were free for practice.
Once we had gone through our own warm-up routines we played our regular couple of games of ‘bounce’ to get moving and then went to the back of the court to warm up our groundstrokes. The majority of this morning’s session was focussed around getting used to the altitude again – it’s not as high here as it will be in Windhoek next week but it’s still just over 1,000m above sea level which does have an effect on the ball. Yesterday when we started practicing we had brand new balls which meant the courts felt a lot more bouncy but now they have worn a little it’s much easier to control the ball. Toby and I trained for just over an hour and a half and managed to get a lot of points played too which definitely helped to get used to the altitude in match conditions.
After the session we showered and changed (pretty much in the dark as they have to limit the amount of electricity used!) and then Benny drove us to Riverwalk Mall so we could get some lunch. We went back to the Brazilian restaurant where we had dinner last night and had the same pasta dishes too! Benny then drove us back to the club for our second practice of the day.
As we walked onto court this afternoon I thought I recognised the guy hitting on the court next to us and as we got closer it turned out to be Mark Petchey who was having a break away from his Sky Sports commentary role to spend the week with his daughter who is playing the ITF. I’ve met Mark a couple of times before and we had a quick chat before we both carried on with our own sessions.
It was another really good practice from Toby and when we went into points he was making life very difficult for me! During the session we noticed that there were a lot of military planes flying around the tennis centre and later found out that they were just practicing for a big show that’s happening tomorrow. At one stage, just as we were in the middle of a point, 3 fighter jets shot directly above our heads. The noise was so loud that it felt as though they were right on top of us and it actually made us both duck!! I’m sure I won that point but we decided to play a let as I think we both closed our eyes! It would have been great to get some pictures but hopefully I’ll get some tomorrow.
We finished around 4.15pm and then Toby signed-in for Qualifying but it still seemed as though there weren’t many players around. We knew that there would not be a girl’s Qualifying draw but we still expected at least 15-20 boys to be signing in.
When we were finished we headed back to the guesthouse to relax for an hour before heading back to the Mall for dinner. We did look at a couple of the other restaurants but Toby decided to go back to Rodizio … I had to change up my dinner as I didn’t fancy pasta again but Toby went for the same dish for the third meal in a row!
Once we got back to the guesthouse the draw was out:
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Toby doesn’t play tomorrow as he has a Bye so we’re going to have a light training day so that he’s 100% fresh for Sunday.
