Thursday 5th May 2011
It was a day off training today as we left Daytona Beach and drove down the coast to Plantation via the women’s $50k event in Indian Harbour.
It was a much more relaxed start to the day as we had a late breakfast and left the hotel at 9.30am. It was just under an hour and a half’s drive down to Indian Harbour and it was made a little more exciting by Devan freaking out when we almost ran out of petrol (or so she thought!!). We arrived at the Kiwi Tennis Club just after 11am to watch some of the women’s challenger event – I was at this event three years ago with Naomi Cavaday and have always remembered how friendly the club members were and how they all make a huge effort to make the tournament a success. A lot of the members get involved too and go on court as Ball Men and Ball Women!
We watched some of Mel South’s training session before watching some of the other women’s matches; as we watched we talked through the things we had worked on yesterday on the court and it was great to give Devan a live example of how committed and aggressive the players were to their shots without necessarily hitting the ball hard. Devan made a great comment about how some the juniors in Daytona Beach hit the ball much better than the seniors today but we both agreed that mentally the players in Indian Harbour were much stronger than the juniors and as we all know tennis is not all about having a good strike on the ball or a massive weapon!
Soon Laura Robson was on Stadium Court to take on Lucky Loser Aleksandrina Naydenova who had beaten 4th seed Julia Cohen in the first round. Laura was aggressive from the start and continued that way all the way through the match taking the win 6-3, 6-2. She looked really comfortable on the clay, I’m not sure how much she’s been working on her movement but it looked very good today. Naydenova did get a consolation prize though as she won $1,000 for “upset of the tournament” after being Cohen in round 1.
Laura in action at the Kiwi Tennis Club
As soon as Laura had finished we were back on the road for another couple of hours of driving and finally arrived in Plantation at around 5.30pm. The drive down was pretty dull as there wasn’t much to see but we did take a couple of good pictures:
Something a bit different as a mailbox
Florida Oranges - probably the best in the world!
It’s back to training tomorrow as we prepare for the next event on Saturday.
