Tuesday 17th May 2022
It was another good day of learning for the players today at the Ten-Pro event in Holland and we ended up with 2 wins out of 5 matches. That brings our total matches played so far to 13 in 3 days!
It was our second 5:30am start in-a-row this morning and once again we were up and out by 6:30m for the 30 minute drive to Licthenvoorde. The team then warmed up at 7am and hit from 7:15-7:50am. Due to the lack of practice courts after the matches, the only time to train and improve some small areas of their games is in the pre-match warm-up so the players really make the most of this time.
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Arundhati and Isla going through their pre-match warm-up
Isla was supposed to be first on at 8am but by 8:30am we were still waiting for her opponent to arrive. Normally in an ITF or Tennis Europe event the player would have been defaulted if they were not ready to play within 15 minutes of their match being called but the Ten-Pros are a little more relaxed. I also would much prefer Isla to have as many matches as possible so I definitely wouldn’t be complaining (not too much anyway!!).
Isla went on court at 8:35am to face Oliwia Kadzielska from Poland and from the beginning we knew it would be testing both in terms of the tennis and also dealing with the emotional outbursts of the opponent!
Overall Isla played some very good tennis against a good quality opponent but, despite leading 3-0 in both sets, she eventually went down 6-4, 6-4.
Next up was Rhys who was all set and raring to go to take on Tomasz Kowalczyk from Poland. Rhys has been working really hard this week on the mental side of his game and in this match he was superb. He raced through the first set 6-1 against a good quality opponent and then took a 5-3 lead in the second before Tomasz started fought back to level the set at 5-5. This didn’t faze Rhys though and he stayed composed to hold and then break to take the match 6-1, 7-5.
After Rhys’s match I debriefed both players and then at around 12:30pm we headed over to the main site in Gendringen. The journey took us on an interesting road:
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Not as bad as the horse trail but my poor car!
Isla’s U11 1/4 Final was scheduled for 2pm and she took to the court just before that to face Julie Vulsteyke from Belgium. We watched Julie play yesterday and knew that she is a strong competitor and a big hitter so Isla was fully prepared.
The match started well and both girls were going after the ball but it was Julie that got the first breakthrough to lead 3-1 serving. Isla continued to fight hard and make life difficult for Julie and even though she went 4-2 down she dug deep to win 4 games in-a-row to win the set 6-4.
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Isla serving on the far court at the Gendringen Kei-Fit tennis centre
I then came on court to offer a few words of advice and to challenge Isla to change the pace during the rallies in order to make things a little uncomfortable for her opponent. Isla took this on board and to her credit she did it really well which lead to her winning the second set 6-0!
Our 4th and 5th matches involving Arundhati and Rhys went on within about 30 minutes of each other between 3pm and 3:30pm. Arundhati had a very tough match against Emilia Henningsen from Denmark and Rhys had an equally tough match against the only unbeaten player in his U13 group – Bobbi Platenburg from Holland.
Despite playing some good tennis in parts and trying her best to change things in the 2nd set, Arundhati ended up losing 6-1, 6-0. Rhys had a slightly closer match but I think the toll of playing 5 matches in 3 days started to show in his 6-3, 6-1 loss to Bobbi.
After the matches we debriefed together and then headed across the border to Germany for dinner! It was then back to the house for everyone to have a much needed early night.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Pihla Jouhten (FIN) vs Arundhati Ajit (GBR) – 1st match at 8am
Sterre Peeters (NED) vs Isla Smith (GBR) – not before 5pm
Rhys Roberts (GBR) vs Jesse Pijnscker (NED) – not before 6:30pm
