Colombo U18 ITF Grade 4, Day 6

Wednesday 16^th October 2013

We had a disappointing end to a great couple of weeks today as Holly lost in the ¼ Finals and wasn’t quite able to produce the level of tennis that saw her beat the number 2 seed yesterday.

Once again we had breakfast at 6.30am and then, after saying goodbye to Alex who flew home today, Holly and I got the shuttle bus to the courts at 7.15am.

The weather this morning was beautiful which meant that the clay courts were open early for practice so, after going through her physical warm up, Holly took to the court at 8am with Holly Hutchinson. Their session was good but I felt as though Holly’s shots had just got a little flatter than yesterday. She was happy with how she was hitting though and how the player feels is much more important than how the coach feels the player is hitting!!

Having watched Holly’s opponent play yesterday we knew what she did well and what she struggled with so we discussed tactics and goals before Holly went on court at 9am.

From the very first game Holly struggled with her consistency from the back of the court and 3 unforced errors seemed to set the tone for the rest of the set. Holly soon found herself 3-0* down having been broken twice; she was trying to be aggressive but wasn’t able to produce enough spin on the ball and ultimately that resulted in far too many errors. Part of Holly’s game plan was to move her opponent and then look to hit back behind to make her turn but, as she was hitting so flat, too many shot ended up going down the middle of the court – and that was just too comfortable for Xeniya. Holly kept fighting and managed to break Xeniya’s serve at 0-3* and 2-5* but she went down 6-3 in the opening set having only held her own serve once.

I was very surprised to see Holly making so many unforced errors especially after her superb performance yesterday and during the second set it didn’t get much better!! To her credit Holly tried to do different things to find a way to win; she sliced off both sides, hit high balls, drop shots, angles etc. and after a good 1^st game I thought Holly had turned the corner. However, during the next 6 games she just couldn’t hit enough quality shots in a row to break down her opponent who, to be fair played to her, played much better than when we saw her play yesterday.  The final score was 6-3, 6-1 and I think we’ve got to put it down to Holly having “a bad day at the office!”

Despite Holly finishing her trip with a disappointing match she has done really well over the past 2 weeks considering last week she was suffering from heat stroke. Two quarter-finals in two weeks, beating a seed in each week and pushing the number 1 seed very hard last week is a good achievement and I know Holly has learnt a lot about herself and her game on this trip.

During the afternoon we relaxed at the hotel and packed everything up ready for our flight home tomorrow. We then met up with Holly Hutchinson (who had won her ¼ final 6-1, 6-0 after a superb performance) and the Win Tennis team at 5.30pm to have a bit of a sightseeing trip around Colombo!

We first headed to Majestic Mall to get some DVDs and then went over to Dutch Hospital to get dinner. The players were keen on going to TGI Friday’s for our last meal but it opens for the first time on Saturday so we went across the road to the other Hilton hotel in Colombo. The food was excellent and the banter over dinner was brilliant – I think by the end of the meal Phillip (from South Africa) really knew the meaning of the word “banter”!!

We are going to go to the club tomorrow morning to thank everyone and say goodbye before heading off to the airport for our long flight back to London.

The next trip will be to the U18 ITF Grade 5 event in Norway on Friday 1^st November so please check back in then to see how that trip goes!