Saturday 21st April 2012
After arriving back from the Nottingham U18 ITF late on Thursday evening I was back on the road early this morning to get the train to Bournemouth to meet up with Dave Hodgetts for the Men’s $10k Futures event.
After leaving home at 6am I got a train to London and then changed to get on a South West train to Bournemouth where Dave met me just before 10am. It was then straight to the West Hants Club where the tournament will be held this week on their American Clay courts. Dave had already been in Bournemouth for the last week playing in the British Tour event but due to the bad weather he’d been unable to train much on the clay so, as the weather was much better today, it was a good chance to get some valuable court time in.
Dave trained this morning with fellow Riverside Academy player Oliver Hudson from 10.30 – 11.45am where, despite the windy conditions, the boys had a good session and managed to go through some drills as well as play some points out. Dave’s level has improved a lot since I last saw him in the middle of March and he’s now got a good 5 week tournament block coming up which I know he’s going to do well in.
Dave and Oli training on Centre Court
After the session Dave cooled down, showered and changed before we headed into the local village of Winton to get some lunch from Waitrose. It was then a short journey to our hotel for the week to check in and get everything sorted before heading back to the club for our afternoon session.
Due to a bit of a mix-up with who Dave was going to practise with in the afternoon he ended up not having anyone to train with so it was down to me to put him through his paces! We were on court between 3.30 – 4.30pm and as it was Dave’s last session before he competes tomorrow the content was all points based. Between some heavy rain showers we managed to play points off the ground as well as with serve and Dave really increased his level and actually played better than this morning (must have been hitting with me!!). It was then straight into the gym for a long stretch out and by 5.45pm Dave had signed in and was all done for the day.
For dinner we decided to go to Valentino’s – it’s a great little Italian restaurant that I’ve been to many times before and it’s owned by one of the club members so he always gives us a bit of a discount – always a bonus! During dinner we managed to see the draw:
Schedule for tomorrow:
Dave Hodgetts (GBR) vs Patrick Ogier (GBR) – 1st match on at 10am
Winner to play (13) Nick Jones (GBR) (1722) – 3rd match after 10am (not before 2pm)
