Monday 18th October 2021
It was a good day all round at the El Cortijo Club de Campo today as Isla put in another good day of training while Matthew picked up his first Tennis Europe win!
The day started bright and early as we were the first team to arrive on-site at 7:30am this morning so that Isla could practice on the clay before she signed in as a Lucky Loser. While Isla and I trained on the clay, Matthew practiced with his doubles partner, Oliver Page, who is here with the Swansea Regional Player Development Centre team. There are quite a few British teams out here this week as well as some individual players too which is fantastic to see.
After Matthew and Isla finished their practices, we sat down to watch some of the Brits play their first round U12 matches. We watched some good performances from Megan Knight (2011 yob) who won in 3 sets and also a very tough 7-5, 7-6(0) win for Sevil Parviz (2010 yob).
At around 11am Victoria Herrera from the Soto Academy went on for her first round match so we supported her throughout. Despite losing 6-0, 6-1 she actually played some good tennis and, like with many of the players competing this week, the challenge is not to hit the ball well but to do it consistently enough so that a run of points leads to a run of games and that leads to winning sets. I’m sure Victoria will learn a lot from her match and I know she’ll be ready to fight hard again in her next match on Wednesday.
We then had a big break in the middle of the day where Isla could get a lot of school work done and Matthew could go back to the hotel to relax before his 1st round doubles match. During this time the U12 and U14 doubles draws were released:
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At around 5:30pm Matthew and Oliver went on court to face identical twins Marc & Alex Sala Pagès from Spain. Even though Matthew and Oliver had never played doubles together before they gelled straight away and wasted no time in taking a 4-0 lead before their opponents managed to get a game on the board. They then held serve and broke again to take the first set very convincingly 6-1.
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The second set was a bit more tricky as Marc and Alex changed tactics and started to become a lot more active at the net. The Spanish pair broke Oliver in the first game and then held serve to lead 2-0 before Matthew managed to hold serve himself to steady the ship. From that stage both Matthew and Oliver started to control the net a lot better and put more pressure on their opponent’s groundstrokes which resulted in them winning 5 of the next 6 games to take the match 6-1, 6-3. Both boys played well but I was particularly impressed with how strong and fearless Oliver was at the net today – he may not be the biggest player in terms of height but he’s got a big heart and gives it everything he’s got!
After the match we found out that Matthew was first on at 8:30am tomorrow so we all ate dinner at the club and then headed back to the hotel via the supermarket to stock up on water and food for tomorrow.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Matthew Wilkes (SGP) vs Alejandro Padilla Perez (ESP) – 1st match at 8:30am
