Czech Republic U18 TF Grade 4, Day 1

Sunday 17th January 2016

Following 4 days back in England, Toby Huffer and I were back on the road to Prague in the Czech Republic today for our final tournament in this 3 week block.

I woke up this morning at 5.15am to about a centimetre of snow but by the time I got to Orpington to pick up Toby a lot more snow had settled.

We then headed to Gatwick where everything was going smoothly; we checked in without any problems, managed to get some breakfast and were even on the plane ready to go at our scheduled departure time of 8.35am. We were then told that they had to de-ice the plane but that should only take 5-10 minutes. With that I put my headphones on and fell asleep. When I woke up at 10.15am I expected us to almost be in Prague but when I looked out of the window all I could see was another Easyjet plane right next to us!

We eventually got going 2 hours late but once we were in the air the flight went quite quickly and not before long we landed to even more snow in Prague. On the way to the hotel we called the tournament referee to book us a practice court from 4-5pm and after dropping our bags off in our rooms we walked to the club.

I was last out here for this event in 2014 and I absolutely loved everything about Prague; the city is spectacular, the restaurants are excellent and food is very reasonable and best of all is the tennis club which is situated on an island in the middle of the river that surrounds the city.

I warmed up with Toby from 3.30-4pm but in the end I wasn’t needed as a hitting partner as we met up with Ondrej Styler who played doubles with Toby in Sri Lanka last year. The club where the tournament is played is Ondrej’s home club and after he finished his own session from 3-4pm he asked if he could hit with Toby for an hour.

The boys trained really well together for the whole hour and Toby seemed to get used to the courts very quickly. They spent the first 30 minutes warming up and drilling and then spent the last 30 minutes playing points which was exactly what we needed.

At 5pm Toby cooled down, showered, changed and then signed-in for the Qualifying before we made our way back to the hotel.

Due to the delay in our flight this morning we didn’t have a lot of time to eat much for lunch so by the time it came to dinner we were both very hungry! We managed to find a little Italian restaurant just down the road from the hotel called ‘Capua’ and the food was superb. During dinner the draw was released:

**I will post the draw sheet as soon as the referee sends it to me!**

After dinner Toby headed back to the hotel to book practice for tomorrow and have a good stretch out while I headed up the road in the pouring snow to try and find a supermarket!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Jiri Lehecka (CZE) (UNR) vs Toby Huffer (GBR) (1064) – 3rd match after 8.30am