Wednesday 29th April 2015
It’s been a good week in Botswana but unfortunately it came to an end this afternoon as Toby and Goni went down to number 1 seeds Calvin Jordaan and Timothy Dollman in the ¼ Final of the doubles.
We had a slightly more relaxed morning today which saw us meet for breakfast at 8am and then head over to the club at 9am with Benny. Toby and Goni’s doubles match had a not before time of 2.30pm but because we needed to leave the tournament site to get lunch we had to make sure that we could get our training completed and then get over to Airport Junction and back again by the latest 1.45pm.
As soon as we arrived at the club we started warming up on one of the older back courts before moving to court 9 to start the session. We had planned on training for an hour but by the time we had worked on some groundstrokes, drilled a lot of volleys including doing some doubles specific points and then work on serve and return we actually didn’t finish until just before 11.30am. We then had a quick shower and met up with Benny who took us over to Rhapsody’s for lunch.
When we returned to the club at about 1.30pm the referee was keen to get us on court as soon as possible but as he had stated ‘not before 2.30pm’ we knew that we had plenty of time to mentally and physically prepare for the match. Unfortunately when it got to 2.30pm Toby and the two South African’s were on court ready to play but no-one could find Goni! After looking for him for 10 minutes we were starting to get a little nervous as they could get defaulted if they weren’t on court 15 minutes after being called but luckily we found him fast asleep at the back of one of the stands!
Despite Goni still looking half asleep when the match started the boys settled in well for the first three games but after a tight forth game Goni was broken and they fell 1-3* behind. Toby and Goni responded well and broke Calvin Jordaan in the very next game but after that the number 1 seeds raised their game and went on to take the set 6-3.
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Toby and Goni ready to return serve in the opening game of the match
Toby and Goni were a little more static at the net during the first set than they were yesterday and despite trying to do different things in the second set, they just couldn’t string enough good points together to really hurt Calvin and Timothy. The South African pair broke Toby in the first game of the second set and then never really looked back as they went on to take the set 6-0.
It was a big ask for Toby and Goni to take down a solid pair like Calvin and Timothy but at the same time they could have been more effective with their net games and, if they had kept closer during the opening stages of the first set, maybe it might have been a different story.
After the match we returned to the guesthouse to start to pack up our things and get ready for our flights to Namibia tomorrow. We then headed out to Riverwalk Mall at 6.15pm for dinner and while we were driving over Benny told us that the government had switched off the electricity in the houses in the local area as part of an energy saving plan. The restaurants still had power as they had generators but apart from that all of the houses and neighbourhoods that we passed were in complete darkness.
When we returned to the guesthouse at 8pm the electricity was still off but it did give us a chance to have a proper conversation with Shirley (the owner) and one of her friends who lives across the street. Sometimes we’re so busy during the day that we just go from doing one thing to another but tonight we were able to stand out in front of the house with no light pollution and thousands of stars shinning above our heads and actually learn a bit about each other’s lives.
We spent a really nice hour talking about all kinds of things and it really made me realise how lucky we are to travel so much and see so many amazing places around the world. Shirley and Benny have only ever been to South Africa and Botswana and had never heard of many of the countries that we’d visited. They’d also never seen snow before and thought it was hilarious when I showed them a video of my daughter skiing and sledging! It was a really nice feeling to be able to share things with them and I hope to keep in touch with them in the future.
It was a lovely end to our time here in Botswana and now we’ll have a day off tomorrow while we travel to Namibia for the next event which starts of Saturday.
