Thursday 11th April 2013
It was another successful day today as Mia took a close ¼ final match to advance to her first U18 ITF semi-final, while the girls moved into the doubles final after a walkover in their semi-final.
As Mia was scheduled for 1st match at 9am we had an early breakfast at 6.30am and then got a taxi to the tennis club at 7.20am. Mia and Georgie then warmed up and hit for about 25 minutes until Mia was feeling the ball well and ready for her match.
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Mia warming up before her 1/4 final match
We then talked about some of the key points from yesterday’s match with Arki Truscott while Mia completed her pre-match sheet. Then at 9am Mia went on to face Nanette Nylund from Finland.
The first game of the match was 18 points long as both girls struggled to find a consistent level but Mia came out on top to hold serve. The set then went with serve as neither girl was able to really impose themselves on the match but, as Mia was definitely the more aggressive of the two players, I knew it was only a matter of time before she got a breakthrough. Mia got a break at 3-2* but was broken back in the next game and, after Mia didn’t hear the chair judge call a serve out, the set was suddenly level at *4-4. At this point Mia took a deep breath and stepped up to play two good games where she hit 1 winner and 0 unforced errors to take the first set 6-4.
The first set had been a tight affair, not only in the scoreline but also in the level but when Mia took a *3-1 lead in the second set it looked as though the match was over. Nanette kept fighting though and I think thoughts of last week when Mia was 3-0 up against Madison Harrison started to creep in. Nanette took the next 2 games to level the set at *3-3 but Mia stayed positive and continued to stay patient in the rally. After holding serve in the next game, Mia then broke Nanette and finished the match well with another good service game to win 6-4, 6-3 and book her place in the semi-final.
It was a hard fought win against the type of opponent that Mia does not like to play but she stayed more patient than she has done recently and that made a massive difference. By winning that match Mia has now advanced to the semi-finals of a singles U18 ITF for the first time and hopefully she can go one better on Saturday.
After a break for lunch we got back on court just before 1pm to work on some doubles. By this stage we had not been told that Mia and Georgie had received a walkover in the semi-finals but we knew that it was very likely as neither opponent had been onsite all day. After warming up Alex and I took on the girls in a couple of full sets to work on the specifics that we identified from the ¼ final match yesterday. The girls didn’t seem too up for the challenge of playing us and after two quick 6-2 sets we decided to change the teams around. Alex teamed up with Georgie and I took on the challenge of playing with Mia!!
The final set started really well for us and we flew to a 5-2 lead but Alex and Georgie weren’t quite done there! They played some very sharp doubles and, even if they crossed and missed, they were definitely doing the right thing to develop their games. Alex and Georgie went on to win the next 5 games in a row and deny us 3 set point opportunities to take the set 7-5 – too good from them!!
Once we were done we got some food and then waited for the referee to return onsite to confirm that the girls had received a walkover. We then returned to the hotel at around 4pm to stretch out and relax before we had a nice dinner at the hotel restaurant this evening.
Alex was keen to join in on the karaoke in the lobby tonight but instead we went on the search for an open supermarket to get some food and water . . . but we couldn’t find one!
Schedule for tomorrow:
(1) Georgie Axon (GBR) (612) vs (5) Anna Wierda (USA) (840) – 1st match at 10am
(1) Georgie Axon (GBR) & Mia Smith (GBR) vs (2) Jenna Friedel (USA) Michelle Valdez (DOM) – 2nd match after 4pm
