Friday 29th April 2011
It was a great start to the trip today, we had beautiful weather, two very good sessions on court and a great choice for lunch, shame dinner didn’t quite cut it!!
It was an early start today to watch a bit of the Royal Wedding, it was strange though as the running commentary of events was by American journalists and not the familiar voices of the English TV channels. We then had breakfast which brought back a lot of memories of training at Bollettieri’s – the standard Holiday Inn breakfast of a bagel, Raisin Bran and a strawberry and banana yogurt!! It was then off to the club at 9am.
The Florida Tennis Centre has a basic clubhouse but it boasts 24 American Clay courts which are all very well maintained and includes a stadium court. We went straight on court, had a very thorough warm up to get the flight and a little bit of jetlag out of our system and then had a very productive 2 hours of training. As always the first session is about getting a feel for the courts, finding out which way the wind is blowing and figuring out how the sun is going to cross over the court so we’re prepared for the match no matter what time of day it might be. Devan worked really hard throughout and as first sessions go this was one of the best I’ve had in a long time. She got a good feel for the courts, was moving well and despite a slight hiccup with a racket issue (!!) everything went very well.
Great clay courts and clear blue skies - beautiful sight!
After the session we had a drive around to check out the local supermarkets and find the best place to get some lunch. We settled on Whole Foods for lunch and it didn’t disappoint – a world class sandwich and wrap did the job nicely! I then experienced Devan’s uncontrollabl excitement of going around a supermarket in Wal-Mart before we returned to the club with all the supplies we needed including the world class Banana Boat Sport sun cream!
We were back on court for our second session at 3pm, the morning was more about consistency of groundstrokes so this afternoon we hit more serves and returns, volleys and drive volleys and played a few points out to finish off. After the session we did some interval sprints and then had a very thorough stretch out to end the day.
For dinner tonight Devan wanted to have a change from Olive Garden so we took a drive to the beach to see what it was like there. After looking for a while we settled on a place that was, hmmm . . . interesting!! I won’t go into the details but as soon as the waitress approached us and said “Hi, I’m Emily and I’ll be your driver this evening” I knew that it was only ever going to go downhill from there!
Qualifying starts tomorrow but it’s two more days of training for us to get ready for main draw starting on Monday.
