Mombasa U18 ITF Grade 5 (week 2), Day 2

Monday 3^rd December 2012

We had 2 good wins on the board today as Holly picked up her first ITF singles points and Mia also took a comfortable win to start her week 2 campaign.

Holly was scheduled 3^rd match on and Mia was 4^th match on after 9am so we met for breakfast at 8.30am and then were over at the club going through the player’s physical warm ups by 9.30am. The practice court situation hasn’t improved much since last week but now the players and coaches have an understanding that if someone is next match on then they can take priority. Holly and Mia hit together from 10 – 10.30am and then they prepared for their matches by completing their pre-match sheets.

As Mia and Holly were both scheduled to play in the middle of the day Mason arranged to practice in the morning with Philip Hellstrand from Sweden and then in the afternoon we arranged for him to join all of the boys in the Euroelite team for a lot of point play to prepare him for his main draw match tomorrow. Mason also had a scouting job to do as he plays the winner of a 1^st round match so he spent some time today watching and analysing both players.

Even though Mia was scheduled 4^th on and Holly was 3^rd on, Mia’s court had two 6-0, 6-0 wins so she went on before Holly at 12.45pm to play wildcard Diana Wamwene Munyasya from Kenya. We knew it was going to be a very comfortable match but I was very pleased that Mia went about her job professionally and did what she could to improve throughout the match. Mia made it three out of four 6-0, 6-0 wins on court 2 today and she was very pleased with how she played.

There was a little bit more of a wait on court 3 for Holly’s match as fellow Brit Alex Hagon had a long 6-4 in the third win against another Kenyan. Alex fought hard and had to deal with his opponent’s local support but eventually took the match for his first ever singles main draw win – he definitely deserved the two bottles of Coke he had afterwards!!

Holly finally went on around 1.45pm against Sunita Verma from Norway who is one of Dave’s Euroelite players. Holly had played Sunita in a practice set last week and had won 6-3 so she knew exactly what she had to do. Holly was a little nervous at the start of the match but after holding serve in the opening game she relaxed, slowed down between points and started to play some excellent tennis. Holly found a great level and it was obvious she learnt a lot from her matches and training in the last week as the targets she was finding were much more realistic and she was much more patient in the rally. The score line doesn’t reflect how close some of the games were but Holly ended up taking the match 6-0, 6-0.

After Holly was finished I gave both of the girls the option to either train more on court if they felt they needed to improve their level for their next match or go through one of their strength and conditioning programmes. Both girls were happy with their tennis so we headed straight over to the cricket pitch were Mia went through a pre-hab session while Holly completed her own specific fitness session.

 

After cooling down and stretching out we headed back to the hotel to shower, change and get some food.

Following Baijul’s tour of Mombasa last night we decided to go and see Fort Jesus in the daylight just before dinner so, along with Dave and his team, we stopped 4 Tuk Tuks to take us all up there. The Fort was built in 1593 by the Portuguese for defence but later turned into a prison before it was more recently turned into a Museum and it has some great views over the India Ocean.

From there we had a quick stop at the hotel before we headed back out to the Royal Court Hotel for a brilliant dinner which saw Holly, Mason and myself having to complete embarrassing dares for losing at “Chase the Ace!”

Schedule for tomorrow:

(6) Mia Smith (GBR) (782) vs (q) Vicky Geurinckx (BEL) (UNR) – 3^rd match after 9am

Keshav Vellodi (USA) (1764) vs (12) Mason Recci (GBR) (1017) – 3^rd match after 9am

(1) Nikita Dawda (KEN) (259) vs (q) Holly Hutchinson (GBR) (UNR) – 3^rd match after 9am

(1) Nikita Dawda (KEN) & Valentina Kulikova (RUS) vs Hannah Brett (GBR) & Holly Hutchinson (GBR) – 4^th match after 9am

(4) Claudia Cianci (POR) & Sofia Sualehe (POR) vs Mia Smith (GBR) & Shannon Wong Hon Chan (MRI) – 5^th match after 9am