Monday 17th November 2014
After two difficult matches in Qualifying, Toby and Alex caught a break today and the decision to stay an extra night to try to get into the doubles paid off.
I got a sense this morning that neither of the boys were that impressed with my training schedule for the day as we were up and out of the hotel by just after 6.30am!! We needed to get an early start because we didn’t have any booking priority on the practice courts due to neither of the boys playing today. That meant that we arrived at the tennis centre just before 7am but as the centre didn’t open to 7.30am we went across to the gym to warm up there.
Originally I thought that we’d only be able to get on a court from 7.30-8am as after that time all of the players with matches today should have needed the courts but we were very fortunate to be able to stay on the same court for an hour and a half. For the first 30 minutes we had the full court and were able to do a lot of specific work around Toby and Alex’s groundstrokes then from 8-9am our attention moved to their volleys and specific doubles work – we even managed to get a few full court serving points in at the end of the session!
It was a good training session where both boys worked hard but at 9am the really hard work began! As Toby and Alex lost in the Qualifying they both knew that their best bet for getting into the doubles would be to sign-in with a main draw player and they had 3 hours to make that happen!
After an hour Alex had 2 options for a partner; a Belgium and a Czech player but they would only stay for doubles if they won their opening singles match. Toby on the other hand had nobody! To be honest I felt as though Toby could had done more to find a partner so at 10.15am I bet him that I could find a partner for him before he does! Feeling extremely confident Toby took the bet and the challenge was on but, like my most coaches, I had a trick up my sleeve!
Once I had finished some work on the computer I went outside and called Matt Summers (who lost in qualifying yesterday) to see if he wanted to come back up to Liverpool to play doubles with Toby. His answer was a very firm “Yes” so job done! Even though Toby had lost the bet he was very grateful that he now had a partner but the twist to the tale is that by this stage Alex’s two options had both lost and so he was left with nobody!
After more asking around trying to find a partner I eventually came up with the idea of asking Anders (the tournament director) if there were any players he knew of that were looking for a partner and, with 5 minutes to go until the sign-in deadline, Alex partnered up with Thomas Kyle from Lancashire.
Boy’s Doubles Draw
With the stress of the morning over and both boys into the doubles we had some lunch and then I beat the pair of them at table tennis!!
Then at 1.30pm the three of us and Nell Millar went over to the Wirral Indoor Tennis Centre for our second training session of the day. The courts over there were excellent and at just £9 per hour it was a much better option than fighting for 30 minutes of training on half a court at the tournament site.
The session was mainly doubles specifics and all of us worked very hard to get into positions to finish as many points at the net as possible. That led to all of us getting ‘pinned’ at some point in the session but ‘pin of the day’ has to go to Toby who managed to get Nell ‘I’ve never been hit before’ Millar right on the top of the head!
After an hour and 15 minutes of very good training we had a little ‘Bounce’ tournament to cool down and then it was back to Liverpool to drop Nell off before Toby, Alex and I went to the train station to pick up Matt.
In was then off to our 3rd hotel of the trip which is right in the centre of Liverpool before heading out to dinner at 6.30pm.
Schedule for tomorrow:
(4) Jake Hersey (GBR) & Luke Oakley (GBR) vs Toby Huffer (GBR) & Matt Summers (GBR) – 3rd match after 9am
Alex Hagon (GBR) & Thomas Kyle (GBR) vs (3) Vuk Budic (USA) & Simon Carr (IRL) – 4th match after 9am
