Colombo U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 5

Tuesday 8^th October 2013

It was another good day at the Sri Lanka Lawn Tennis Association today as Holly won her 2^nd round match which moves her into the ¼ finals tomorrow.

We were up early again at just before 6am and then down to breakfast by the time it opened at 6.30am. Alex had a good breakfast and, as Holly was feeling a little better than yesterday, she managed to eat around half of her normal amount.

We then got the 7am shuttle to the tennis centre but once again the overnight rain had meant there were still lots of puddles on the courts. By the time we had gone through our physical warm ups the staff had managed to clear most of the water so both Holly’s hit together, while Alex joined the Win Tennis boys to train with them. As Holly had a singles match today she was the priority so I spent the session with her and talked about her goals for the match today. One of them was to keep her contact point in front on both groundstrokes and here’s a pretty good example:

After 30 minutes of warming up groundstrokes, volleys, drive volleys, serves and returns we both left the court happy and went off to prepare for the match. While Holly was preparing her pre-match sheet I went and saw the physio to have more (very painful!) work on my wrist and forearm – I think I sweated more in that session than I did on court yesterday!!

Before Holly went on we watched some of Holly Hutchinson’s postponed 1^st round match from yesterday and then at 11.15am she went on court to take on wildcard Sadaf Sadeghvaziri from Iran. During the warm up it looked as though Sadaf was the kind of player that would hit very flat and miss a lot of balls but as the set started it was obvious that she was a lot better than she looked. Holly started very well and probably hit the ball the best I’ve ever seen from her; she was able to generate a lot of spin off both sides and produce a consistently aggressive level. Holly broke Sadaf at 1-1* but then played a cheap game to give up her serve in the very next game. That didn’t upset Holly at all and despite going *2-3 down she upped her level again to win the next 4 games in a row to take the opening set 6-3. The games were quite close but it was Holly who played the bigger points well and used good variation throughout the set to keep the ball out of Sadaf’s hitting zone.

Holly continued to play at a high level at the start of the 2^nd set and raced to a 3-0* lead. However, 4 unforced errors in the next game gave Sadaf a little bit of confidence which she used to break Holly in the following game to get the set back on serve. Holly kept her head though and fought hard to win the next 3 games to take the set and the match 6-3, 6-2.

During the match I didn’t think Holly looked too well and when she came off she said she actually felt worse today than she did yesterday! It was therefore an even more impressive performance considering she felt so bad and it also shows how tough Holly can be.

After Holly and I had a quick debrief she went off to shower and change while I went on court with Alex for his second session of the day. He had a really good session for over an hour with two boys from the Philippines and we both felt as though his level of hitting was much better than in his match yesterday.

Once Alex had finished we all squeezed into a Tuk Tuk (along with our bags!) to go back to the hotel. It was a bit tight but good fun!

After lunch Holly still didn’t feel great so she went to bed for the afternoon while Alex and I had a good gym session. I then went back over to the club to get some more treatment on my wrist and book practice courts for tomorrow before I returned to the hotel to meet Alex and Holly for dinner.

Dinner was going smoothly until I lost at cards and had to play a 30 second shadow point around the restaurant! I was actually playing a great point but after misjudging my landing from a jump smash off the steps I found myself sliding across the floor – I think I managed to save it though and finished the point with a great volley!!!

Schedule for tomorrow:

(1) Ria Vaidya (SIN) (280) vs Holly Horsfall (GBR) (1441) – 1^st match at 8.30am

Pei Hsuan Chen (TPE) & Holly Horsfall (GBR) vs Roma Chandiran (IND) & Watsachol Sawasdee (THA) – 4^th match after 8.30am

Alex Hagon (GBR) & Anish Wijesinghe (SRI) vs (2) Phillip De Bruyn (RSA) & Charlie Ridout (GBR) – 5^th match after 8.30am