Friday 26th August 2011
Yesterday Cameron became the first ITC player this year to make the semi-final of an international singles event and today he was looking to go one better.
Semi-final days are always difficult; no-one wants to lose in a semi-final where as if you lose in the final at least you experience the last day of the tournament and get to play in front of at least a few people in the crowd. That’s why you should expect players to be more nervous for a semi than a final and that was the case today with Cameron. He wanted to do so well that he ended up being nervous most of the morning – my response to this is always the same; “it’s good to be nervous because it shows you care about the match, I’m worried by the players who say they don’t get nervous”.
After our normal warm up in the gym and 30 minutes on court training Cam was feeling better and ready to do battle. He had to wait until the match before had finished before he went on but that gave him time to reflect on yesterdays match, prepare his game plan for today, eat, re-grip rackets and generally get him focused for the match. As it was getting closer to match time we all stayed relaxed by competing at “Fruit Ninja” on the iphone – great game, especially when you get three very competitive people together!
Cam took to the indoor courts just after 11.30am and even though he was taking on a player a couple of years younger he knew that Lucas Taylor is a tough player and it wasn’t going to be easy. Cam’s focus at the start of the match was superb – maybe this was due to him being nervous and that made him concentrate more but what ever the reason it worked and he raced to a 2-0 lead. Cam then got broken and ended up losing the next 2 games as Lucas started to find his feet in the rallies. So Cam went from 2-0 up to 3-2 down but dug deep to keep in the set with Lucas who by now was stepping up and taking the ball on more. Cam broke back and then following a few close games Cam got the break at 5-4 to take the set 6-4. Cam’s level was good but he did need to come up the court more and look to finish points from the net as Lucas was very quick around the court and kept making him play one more ball.
In the second set Cam’s confidence grew and he really took his game to Lucas; his serving was much bigger and the unforced error count remained reasonable. Cam took a 3-0 lead and then it went with serve until 5-2 when Cam had a match point on Lucas’ serve but missed a simple short forehand which gave his opponent a bit of belief. Lucas held and then broke Cam easily and everyone watching knew that the next game would really determine the match. As Cam has done all week he responded well to being broken and stepped up from the start of the 5-4 game hitting 2 clean winners and not allowing Lucas to really get into the rally. On his second match point Lucas missed a simple rallying ball to give Cam the match 6-4, 6-4. It ended up being a little more difficult that Cam would have liked but he played well against a tricky opponent and at the end of the day a win is a win and he’s in the final tomorrow!
As we finished early and as it’s Saturday tomorrow (with hopefully less traffic on the road) we decided to drive back to Kent so Cam could save some money and have a good nights sleep in his own bed! We still met up for dinner and of course as it was Cam’s choice we ended up going to Nando’s!!
Schedule for tomorrow:
Boy’s Singles Final:
(1) Julian Cash (GBR) (24) vs Cameron Hawkins (GBR) (UNR) – 2nd round on after 10am, N.B. 11am
