Saturday 7th November 2015
It was a good start to the campaign here in Luxembourg today as Toby had a solid win in the first round of Qualifying.
Due to Toby’s match being scheduled for 6th round on we knew that realistically he wouldn’t go on court until at least 4pm. That meant that we could train at the tennis centre in Petange next to the hotel before having to drive over to the National Tennis Centre later in the day.
With all that in mind we had breakfast at 8am and then went next door to the tennis centre at 9.30am to warm up for our 10-11am practice court. The speed of the courts were a little quicker that at the NTC but it was still a very good surface to train on and it gave us the opportunity to work on a full court for an hour which we wouldn’t have got at the NTC. During the session we warmed up, played some open points off the ground and moved onto playing some points with both of us moving forwards to work on Toby’s volleys. We then finished the session with some serve and return points to ensure that Toby had covered everything before his match this afternoon.
We then walked across the road to the hotel and went back to our rooms to shower and change before relaxing for a couple of hours. Then at 1.30pm we headed over to the NTC via the supermarket to pick up some food for lunch.
When we arrived at the NTC Toby’s potential 2nd round opponents were just starting their match on the stadium court so, armed with our lunch, we sat down and watched them play while tucking into our baguettes!
Just as that match was coming to a conclusion the match before Toby’s had just started on court 3 so we began our preparations.
Then at just after 4.45pm Toby went on court to play Alexandre Smith from France. The first 5 games of the match were a bit of a battle as both players were trying to out hit each other from the back of the court but Toby ended up getting a break and took a *3-2 lead. Then from there Toby started to play a lot smarter by taking some pace off the ball and making Alexandre think more rather than just react to Toby’s shots. That led to Toby winning the next 3 games in a row to take the first set 6-3.
Players at this level often love a ball that is hit hard to them as they can feed off the pace but most of the time it’s a lot harder for them to produce the power themselves. Once Toby worked that out it actually saved him a lot of energy and unforced errors but he still had the bigger shots there if he needed them.
During the second set Toby raced to a *3-0 lead and even though he was broken in a tight 20-point game he remained focussed and won the next 3 games in a row to take the match 6-2, 6-1 in just under 1 hour 20 minutes.
It was a good match from Toby and gives him a solid platform to build on over the next couple of rounds.
After the match Toby showered and changed and then we headed back to Petange to the Verzino restaurant where we ate last night – this time we passed on the £5 bottle of water though!!
By 8.30pm we were back in our rooms preparing for an early start and hopefully two matches tomorrow.
Schedule for tomorrow:
(WC) Toby Huffer (GBR) (1572) vs (7) Martins Rocens (LAT) (1322) – 3rd match after 9am
Winner to play Alexandre Doan Van (FRA) (1766) OR Karlo Cubelic (GER) (1978) – TBC after rest
