Luxembourg U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 3

Sunday 8th November 2015

It was a disappointing day at the National Tennis Centre here in Luxembourg today as Toby went out in the 2nd round of Qualifying to 7th seed Martins Rocens from Latvia.

We had an early breakfast at 6.30am and then drove over to the tennis centre at 7.30am to make sure that we guaranteed ourselves a practice court before the matches started at 9am. When we arrived we thought there was something a little strange going on as 4 players were warming up outside the centre! As it turned out nobody had arrived to open the doors so those that were hitting at 8am had to warm up outside which wasn’t ideal in the cold weather!

We got inside at 8am and went straight onto court 4 to warm up and then had a good 30 minute practice session from 8.30-9am. As we had watched Martins play his 1st round match yesterday we knew a little bit about him so I made sure that Toby worked on some specific points as well as generally warming up all of his shots.

For the next few hours we watched some of the other matches, got some food and made sure that Toby had everything prepared for his match.

Then, at just before 1pm, Toby went on court and from the first few rallies of the warm up it was obvious that it was going to be a real battle today. Martins was striking the ball bigger than he did yesterday and even when Toby did managed to put him under pressure he still was able to find a good quality response. The first few games were very tight and in total lasted 26 points but it was Martins that won all 3. Toby raised the level of his serving at *0-3 to get his first game on the board but Martins quickly responded by holding to Love in the next game. Toby then held his next two service games and even though he was doing very well behind his own serve he found it difficult to make inroads during Martins’ service games which led to him losing the 1st set 6-3.

 

The 2nd set was just as difficult as the first set and despite going 30-0 up a couple of times on Martins’ serve Toby just wasn’t able to convert that into breaking serve. Toby tried to put his opponent under more pressure by moving forwards and taking his time away but each time Martins seemed to find an answer. Toby kept fighting though and managed to finally break Martins at 0-5* but unfortunately he was broken in the next game to lose the match 6-3, 6-1.

As always it’s disappointing to lose in Qualifying but a lot of credit has to go to Martins who produced 30 winners and only 17 unforced errors in the two sets.

After the match Toby went off to see the physio to get his back loosened off and then we headed back to the hotel to relax before dinner.

At 12pm tomorrow it is the sign-in deadline for doubles so our attention now shifts to asking everyone in Main Draw if they are looking for a partner. If we manage to get a partner and get into the doubles then Toby will have a match tomorrow afternoon but if I don’t Blog tomorrow then it’s because we didn’t get in!

Fingers and everything else crossed that we manage to get someone then!