Thursday 14th October 2021
And the Travelling Squad is back on the road!
Over the past 21 years I’ve been fortunate to work with some very hard working and committed players who have given me the opportunity to travel the world at all levels of international tennis from U12 Tennis Europe to Grand Slams. However, now things are a little different as I’m not only the travelling coach but also the travelling parent too!
Having spent the best parts of 2016 – 2019 working with pro players and then being extremely restricted with international travel over the past 18 months due to Covid-19 it was brilliant to finally get back on the road yesterday.
This week I am travelling with Matthew Wilkes and his mother, Angeline, from Kent and my daughter, Isla Smith to the U12 & U14 Tennis Europe event in Gran Canaria.
We all travelled out yesterday from Gatwick and arrived at our hotel around 9pm last night. It was then an early night all round so that we were ready for a full training day today.
This week we’ve rented a car as we knew the club is a little tucked away and it also makes it so much easier to go to and from the club whenever we want to and to get food from a supermarket etc. So, after leaving the hotel at 10am and having a quick stop at the local supermarket to get water, we arrived at the club just after 10:30am.
The tennis club is part of a golf course and has 7 pretty good red clay courts as well as 3 hard courts and some padel courts (which we’re yet to find!).
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Our training today consisted of 2 x 1hr individual sessions for Matthew and Isla which meant that I could enjoy 4 hours grinding on the clay! We trained from 11-1pm and then got some lunch at the supermarket before going again from 3-5pm.
Both players spent their first hour in the morning getting used to the courts and the windy conditions and then the second hour this afternoon was spent playing points. Matthew and Isla worked very hard in both of their sessions but, as Matthew took me down 6-4 in a set, I’d have to say that he got used to the conditions the fastest out of all of us!
At 5:30pm we headed back to the hotel to get showered and changed before walking into town for a lovely Italian dinner. We have one more day of training tomorrow before Isla’s U12 campaign starts on Saturday. However, Matthew moved into the Main Draw of the U14s a couple of days ago so he won’t compete now until Monday (which hopefully gives me a chance to get some revenge!).
