Thursday 10th February 2011
Tough day at the office today as the Team took 2 loses and didn’t perform as well as they have been all week. It was a real shame as this is the business end of the week and places in semi’s and finals were up for grabs.
Matches started at 10am today so we warmed up from 8.40-9am, hit from 9 – 9.30am and then went through Dev’s pre-match talk before she took to the court. Her pre-match hit had been really good but when the match started she really struggled to get into a rhythm and tactically found it hard to move the girl off of the court enough before attacking the space. The Madagascan girl was tough, very solid and worked extremely hard during the rally and didn’t seem to have any interest in sitting in the shade at the change of ends (unlike everyone else in the tournament!!). Both sets were very similar with Devan trying to dictate the points but her opponent neutralised very well causing Devan to push even more resulting in too many errors. Devan continued to fight hard and broke back in the second at 2-4 but was immediately broken again before Andriamamanarivo took the match 6-3, 6-3.
Doubles was up next at 3pm with Beth and Devan taking on Alicia Barnett and Brigit Folland from the Bath International High Performance Centre. Beth and Devan started very well playing sharp aggressive doubles and really took it to their opponents taking the first set 6-2. In the second the Bath girls became more consistent and Beth and Devan had the same problem as the second set yesterday; they could break but just could hold and the unforced errors were starting to mount up. After breaking back at 4-5 to stay in the set they then gave up their serve and Alicia held to take the set 7-5. The match tie-break was again disappointing and a bad service point at 4-5 gave the Bath girls a big boost and they went on to take the set 10-4.
A disappointing day but it’s been a great week overall with all of the girls picking up points in both singles and doubles. Felix has been continually working hard and the time will come very soon when he gets his ranking on the board.
As Devan is still in the qualifying for Nairobi we will be leaving here tomorrow afternoon to take the one hour flight before signing in before 6pm. It’s at altitude next week so the balls could be flying – I’ll let you know how the first session goes on the clay tomorrow evening!
