Saturday 13th April 2013
We had one win and one loss today in the semi-finals as Georgie came through 6-2, 6-4 against Madison Harrison while Mia went down 6-1, 6-1 to number 2 seed Jenna Friedel.
After a late finish last night in the girl’s doubles final the team were looking a little tired at 6.30am this morning when we met for breakfast. They soon perked up a little once they got some food in their systems and we made our way over to the club at 7.30am.
It was a nice feeling being first at the club this morning and after Mia and Georgie completed their physical warm up they then hit for around 30 minutes to get ready for their semi-finals. We hit on the same court as the doubles final last night and the funny thing was it was less than 12 hours since the girls were battling it out for the title – not sure Mia and Georgie saw the funny side though!!
Both girls then completed their pre-match sheets and I went through the plan for their matches individually. At this stage of the tournament all four players should be well into their strides so it really comes down to who is willing to fight the hardest and compete the best to go one stage further and make the final.
As both girls went on at the same time I positioned myself between the two courts so that I could keep up with what was happening in both matches. Mia was taking on Jenna Friedel from America and, having lost to her in the doubles final last night, I was hoping Mia would get some revenge today.
Mia was broken in the first game of the match but responded positively and broke Jenna in the very next game. Unfortunately that was the last game of the set that Mia managed to win as a mixture of Jenna’s consistency and Mia playing a little impatiently resulted in Jenna taking the set 6-1. The set had gone very quickly and Mia made a good decision at the end of the set to go off court to the toilet to gather her thoughts.
Mia played a good game at the start of the second set to break Jenna and take a *1-0 lead and I was hoping that she would start to build some momentum from that game. However, when Mia was broken in the next game her energy levels dropped and she struggled to compete with Jenna from then onwards. It may have been because she was a little tired from the doubles yesterday or that she didn’t believe she could get through a consistent player who wasn’t putting a lot of pace on the ball. In a similar way to the first set Mia lost the next 5 games in a row to go down 6-1, 6-1 in less than an hour. It was a shame that Mia finished on a match like this one as she has competed well in her matches over the last 3 weeks but hopefully she’ll learn from it and it will help her in the future.
Georgie started really well against Madison Harrison from America and after Mia had played her last week we knew exactly what to expect. Georgie broke in the first game and after holding in the next game she kept the pressure on her opponent with some big groundstrokes from the back of the court. Georgie then broke again at 4-2* and served out the set well to take it 6-2.
We knew Madison had some fight in her so it was important for Georgie to stay on top at the start of the second set. Georgie did just that a raced to a 4-0* lead before Madison finally held to get a game on the board. At this stage Georgie threw in a poor service game and then suddenly started to get a little negative as she felt as though it gave Madison an opportunity to get back into the set. Madison held serve to make the score *4-3 but Georgie continued to fight hard even though the quality of the tennis wasn’t as good as in the first set. Both girls then held which left it up to Georgie to serve for the match! Despite the last game being a little edge Georgie kept her nerve to serve out the match 6-2, 6-4. The look on Georgie’s face when she won wasn’t quite the story of the match but at least she’s through to the final!!
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Not quite a big celebration after winning!!
After congratulating Georgie I made my way over to the shopping centre to get on the internet to try and rebook flights so that we could try and fly home after the final tomorrow. It wasn’t an easy job but I eventually managed to get flights to Paris and then a Eurostar train back into Kent!
We had lunch together at the club at around 12.30pm and then returned to the hotel to relax for the afternoon.
As Georgie wasn’t happy with the level at the end of her match, we went back to the club just before 5pm to work on a few different specifics and then go through the tactics for the final tomorrow against Jenna. Alex and I drilled with Georgie for around an hour and then she finished the session with some work on her serve and return to make sure she was fully prepared.
We all then sat down together at the club for dinner and were the only ones left there after the floodlights went off at 7pm!! It was then back to the hotel for an early night to be ready to do battle tomorrow.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Final – (1) Georgie Axon (GBR) (612) vs (2) Jenna Friedel (USA) (658) – 1st match at 9am
