Colombo U18 ITF Grade 4, Day 1

Friday 11^th October 2013

The singles finals of the first ITF here in Colombo were played today, so officially the first week came to an end and our preparations for the second week (also at the same venue but on clay and a Grade 4 event) have begun.

We were up early again this morning and had breakfast when it opened at 6.30am so that we could get over to the club to help Holly Hutchinson prepare for her final. We all warmed up and then both Holly’s hit together while Alex and I trained on the other half court. Once Holly Hutchinson was finished, Holly Horsfall continued to train with me individually while Alex hit with Kerim from the Win Tennis team. Alex then joined us for the last 30 minutes of the session where we worked specifically on transitioning from the baseline to the net in order to close out the point. We had planned for the session this morning to be around an hour to an hour and a half but in the end we were on court for almost 2 hours!

We then had a short break in which time we watched Holly Hutchinson go 5-3 up but I was conscious that I’d not watched Holly play much during the week and I didn’t want to jinx her by now watching the final!! At that stage we headed back to the hotel to get some lunch and then when we arrived back at 12pm we found out that Holly had taken the match 6-3, 6-3 to win her first ITF title.

It was a great effort from Holly who has played well all week and definitely deserves the results after the hard work that her and her team have put in over the last few months. Holly first travelled with me last November to Mombasa and her game has developed a huge amount in the last 12 months.

This afternoon we managed to train on the clay after it had been too wet this morning. Holly, Alex and I warmed up and then spent 20-30 minutes getting used to the clay before going into some tough drilling in 3s. The courts were actually much better than we expected and, even though the lines are just painted on top of the clay, they were much better than the chalk lines in Nairobi! We had an excellent practice for about an hour with both Holly and Alex playing very well and working very hard throughout the session. Unfortunately we were interrupted by a very heavy downpour at 2pm and that ended our time on the clay.

Even though it stopped raining after about 30 minutes the clay was out of the rest of the day so we headed back to the hotel for a gym session and then a good stretch out. Holly Hutchinson joined us in the afternoon and that sparked a crazy couple of hours where both Hollys were a little hyper!!

We all had dinner together to celebrate Holly’s win and tonight was Italian night at the buffet so we all tucked into pizza and pasta. I was surprised that Holly Hutchinson couldn’t quite finish her 2^nd pizza (even though they were quite small!) but somehow she managed to find room for her chocolate cake dessert – it was well deserved though!

After dinner I headed over to the club to book courts for tomorrow but it seems that all the Tuk Tuks stop at night so I had a very interesting walk / run trying to find one to take me back to the hotel!!