Tuesday 23rd August 2011
Another big day for Cameron today as he had his round of 16 singles match as well as a doubles ¼ to compete for, Mia on the other hand had a training day in preparation for her singles match tomorrow.
We arrived at the club this morning to find that it had rained overnight and the macadam courts were still wet – even worse news though was that rain was forecast for the rest of the day. We went into the gym to warm up at 9am; Mia had a longer more physical warm up as she wasn’t competing today but Cameron just had his standard 20-25 minute pre-match warm up. We then headed to the bubble to warm up on court and as we made our way there we were told that all of the U16 matches would be in there throughout the day – a good refereeing decision as at least the players knew where they stood then and there wouldn’t be any confusion. Cam had a good hit with his doubles partner and by 10am he was ready and looking forward to competing.
After eating, changing, filling out his pre-match sheet and talking about the match Cam got on court around 11.30am for his match against 7th seed Marco Ferrandia from Germany. I said to Cam before he went on that seedings and rankings mean nothing at this level and to his credit he didn’t give his opponent any necessary respect based on that. Cam got off to a flyer racing through the first set 6-0 only missing 5 balls in total! It’s not always a good thing to win a set so comfortably against an opponent who obviously can play and at the start of the second Marco started to find his range.
As Marco started to increase his winners from 1 in the first set to 14 in the second Cameron started to get a little more frustrated and then his errors started to go through the roof (literally!). Cam recovered from 3-1 down to level the set at 3-3 but another lapse of concentration at 4-5 gifted Marco the second set 6-4. So . . . now it was “Game On” and let’s see how Cameron would react! To my delight Cam came out in the third much more aggressive and much more focused, just like the first set. He raced to a 3-0 lead by hardly missing and really taking the game to his opponent. Marco held at 3-0 but then Cam increased his level again and took the next 3 games to win the match 6-0, 4-6, 6-1. It was a great effort, he learnt a lot about his own concentration but I also learnt a lot about how mentally tough Cam can also be when he wants to.
After a debrief and some lunch I was back out on the court with Mia in the rain to fine tune her game for tomorrow. Mia trained well today, especially as most of the day she was training with other girls while I was preparing Cameron for his match. We trained for just under an hour before I had to go back inside to watch Cameron’s doubles match but Mia stayed out there to serve and then went into the gym to complete her strength programme and stretch out.
To be honest I wish I had stayed out there in the rain (!!) as Cameron and Dag didn’t really change much from the level they found yesterday. Their opponents today were brothers from Malta who were both pretty solid and knew their way around the doubles court. Unfortunately Cameron and Dag didn’t impose themselves anywhere near as much as they should have done and gave their opponents too many opportunities to get back into rallies when it should have just been finished. Despite having chances in the first set and a set point in the second Cameron and Dag went down 7-5, 7-6(6). They did fight hard but they both need to do a lot of work on their doubles game.
Cam and Dag in doubles action today
By the time both Mia and Cameron had showered and changed it was around 5.15pm so we left site early and chilled out at the accommodation for a while before heading out to a local pub for dinner. Mia had some interesting games to play at the table including naming body parts beginning with the letter ‘B’ – I’ll save her embarrassment by not going through all of them but I had to draw the line when she tried using “blackheads” as one!!!
Cam’s got a training day tomorrow so it’s just down to Mia in the singles:
Schedule for tomorrow:
Mia Smith (GBR) (UNR) vs (3) Nika Hein (GER) (835) – 1st round on at 10am
