Dutch Bowl Ten-Pro, Day 7

Friday 20th May 2022

Before today the team had played a total of 18 matches and had a positive win / loss ratio of 10:8 but two tough matches today meant that we’re now all square at 10 wins and 10 losses!

I’m not sure if the organisers at Ten-Pro like me yet as for the 5^th day in a row I had a 5:30am start! Today it was Arundhati’s turn so, while we left Isla, Rhys and Arwel fast asleep at the house, Arundhati, Deepa and I headed over early to hit at 7am before her 8am match.

As you can see from the picture above the outdoor courts were covered in mist while we were warming up but within 10 minutes the sun was out and we had a great warm-up. Arundhati has been playing really well all week and, after the massive high of yesterday’s win, it was always going to be hard to recreate the same level again today.

Arundhati was playing Julie Vulsteyke from Belgium (who Isla had played three days ago) and we knew that Julie had a very aggressive game, especially off the backhand side, but she was susceptible to making a lot of errors. Arundhati took a *1-0 lead after a sudden death deuce game but after that she was playing catch-up due to Julie playing some big tennis. There was another sudden death deuce point at 1-3*, another at *2-3 and another at 2-4* but Arundhati eventually lost the set 6-2.

At the end of the set I went on and reassured Arundhati that the match was a lot closer than the score line suggests and she was right in this match if she believed it too. Unfortunately doubts and fatigue from playing 8 matches in 6 days started to creep in and after another 5 sudden death deuce games in the set (of which Arundhati didn’t manage to take any) she ended up losing 6-2, 6-1.

The highs of yesterday were replaced with the disappointment of today but that’s tennis unfortunately and I’m sure there will be another match for her to make amends tomorrow.

After the match we headed back to the house to get some food and then it was a quick turnaround to take Isla, Rhys and Arwel back to the club for Isla’s semi-final against Vanessa Lagerlof from Finland.

Isla and Rhys had a really good pre-match warm-up on the outside courts where we not only got Isla prepared but we were also able to work on some specific tactics for the match. Then, at 12pm Isla and Vanessa went on court 1 for the semi-final.

Isla started very well against an extremely strong opponent; she won the first game on a sudden death deuce point and, even though Vanessa broke back and held, Isla responded brilliantly but holding serve in another sudden death deuce game. From 2-2 Vanessa’s level increased considerably and unfortunately Isla’s level was just a little too up and down which saw the 1^st set go against her 6-2.

In a similar way to the earlier match, when I went on court to speak to Isla she felt as though she wasn’t doing well but I explained that actually she was very close to Vanessa’s level. The difference was that Vanessa was able to group sets of good points while Isla might play one good point every two or three points with some unforced errors in-between.

This continued in the second set and, despite Isla trying lots of different things to upset her opponents rhythm or create chances for herself, she eventually went down 6-2, 6-0.

Isla was obviously disappointed to lose a semi-final but she realised as soon as she came off that she needs to make a few small changes in order to compete consistently with these types of player.

Once we had gone through a team debrief, the players went through a really thorough stretching routine:

We then headed back to the house at 2:30pm to relax and play some chess before finally being able to get out of our tennis kit for the first time on the trip for dinner. We left home just after 6pm to head over the border to Germany and for once I relaxed the dinner rules a little!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Arundhati Ajit (USA) vs Marith de Jong (NED) – not before 11am

Atharva Batra (NED) vs Rhys Roberts (GBR) – not before 5pm

Oliwia Kadzielska (POL) vs Isla Smith (GBR) – not before 6:30pm