Saturday 19th November 2011
It was a real sense of Déjà vu today as, after it rained everyday for two weeks in Vietnam, the heavens opened on us twice today to make it two days in a row!
A lot of people voiced their concerns to me before the trip about going out to Burundi and how safe it would be out here but after a lot of communication with the ITF, the East African Tennis Federation and one of the British guys who was playing a Men’s Futures even here a couple of weeks ago I was confident the trip would be safe. I was even more confident when I left the hotel this morning at 6.45am to go to book practise courts when I saw 4 policemen sitting outside the front door of the hotel with machine guns (I didn’t realise I was that important!!).
We all met for breakfast at 7.15am, well . . . we were supposed to meet at 7.15am but the girls were a little late and at 7.30am I had to knock on Jack’s door to wake him up – I love the way they all blame their alarms for not going off!! We warmed up at 8.30am before fighting off the local club members to get on a court at 9am (seems like court bookings are meaningless out here!). This morning we were joined by Jack Oswald from the WIN Academy team and the two boys and the two girls had a great session – everyone’s feeling much better today after a good nights sleep and the quality of the tennis is getting better and better. It’s not easy out here with the ball flying through the air much quicker and the courts proving to be very inconsistent but the players are getting out of the habit of setting too early (as they’re able to on hard) and are working very hard to adjust to the ball after it’s bounced. After setting the players up with specific drills for the first hour they took ownership of the next 45 minutes to work on whatever they needed to so that they felt prepared for their upcoming matches.
By 11.15am everyone had cooled down, stretched out and we were on our way back to the hotel to shower and change. The plan then was to have lunch and then get back on court at 1pm to play some sets out but it seems out here the weather determines what you’re going to do rather than your plans! Just before 1pm it rained heavily for an hour and the courts got absolutely flooded so it was laptops out and on with the school work much to the delight of the players!! It seemed as though the courts would be dry by 4pm so at 3pm Mia, Julia and Jack took it upon themselves to do some physical work by the swimming pool. This all went well until the heavens opened again and it rained for longer and harder than before.
The good thing was that the players had a great session this morning and none of them felt as though they weren’t ready to go and compete. Even Jack, who plays in qualifying tomorrow, was happy with his level and ready to get stuck in.
View from my balcony - (front to back) Hotel swimming pool, local golf course, Lake Tanganyika and Democratic Republic of the Congo in the background!
I went for a walk early this evening to try and find somewhere different to eat dinner as I thought eating the same food in the same restaurant for lunch and dinner for two weeks is not going to be very enjoyable! Unfortunately the other hotel that is close by had an even more basic menu than our hotel – never mind it was worth a go!
We met up with the Bisham team at 6pm to go and see the draw and then afterwards we all ate dinner together which was nice even though it did take almost an hour to get served! After challenging Julia to try and name more US States than me (we actually got all 50!) everyone headed off to bed.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Jack Large (GBR) (UNR) vs Nathan Lavanchy (SUI) (UNR) – 1st match at 11am
