Monday 26th May 2014
It was another very good day of training today and now there’s just one more day left before the Main Draw starts on Wednesday.
It was an early start this morning so that we could guarantee a full court for practice before all of the Qualifying matches started at 9am. We met for a small breakfast at 6.50am and then got a taxi to the tennis club at 7am before going straight on court to warm-up. Holly and Camille then trained together until 9am and, like yesterday, our morning session was based around consistency from the back of the court. Both girls were hitting very well and even though we had to share the court from 8.15am until 9am they still worked very hard and got a lot out of the session.
At 9am the Qualifying matches went on so we all left the court for Holly and Camille to cool down and stretch out while I saw the physio to try and loosen the tightness in my neck that I’ve had for the last couple of days. We then got a taxi back to the hotel at 9.30am and tucked into a well-deserved breakfast.
The rest of the morning was spent at the hotel relaxing and then at 12.30pm we met back at the restaurant for lunch. At 2pm we got another taxi back to the club and, as the Qualifying matches were still going in, we decided to go into the indoor tennis court (which was more like a sauna!) to warm up and then go through some strength and conditioning work. I was pleased to see both Holly and Camille have brought their own S&C programmes with them and I was even more pleased to see that they knew all of the exercises in the programmes!
At 3.30pm the first court of the afternoon became available and we were waiting court side to go on as the boys shook hands. This afternoon was another point based session so I joined in with the girls to add a bit of a competitive edge as I know that players hate to lose to the coach! As the session went on both girls started to feel a little tired and the level often fluctuated but it was still the best hour and a half of points that either of them have played since we all arrived on Saturday – and, much to the girl’s delight, Camille stopped me from winning overall by beating me in the last point of the session!!
Once we were done I went straight to see the physio again while the girls had another good stretch out on the balcony overlooking the river at the back of the club:
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A nice relaxing place to stretch out after a long day of training
Our taxi driver collected us at 5.30pm and took us back to the hotel where we all showered and changed ready for dinner.
The girls are really starting to up the stakes with the forfeits and tonight’s ‘big one’ would see the loser having to warm up tomorrow in the kit of one of the other members of the team. Obviously that meant that if I lost I’d be in a dress or a ridiculously small skirt & ball shorts and if either of the girls lost then they’d be in my kit!! I had visions of Alex Hagon wearing Holly Hutchinson’s match kit while we were in Austria last year and to be completely honest when the game came down to either me or Camille I did start to feel a little nervous! Lucky Camille chocked first and I managed to pull through so I now need to sort out the biggest shirt and shorts that I can find for her!
After dinner we watched the end of the Bennateau vs Bagnis match which saw Bagnis, the Argentinian qualifier ranked 144 in the world, come through 18–16 in the 5th set after almost 4 and a half hours! It was a great match and a good example for the juniors that once you step on the court the ranking of your opponent means nothing. Another example of that today was 3rd seed Stan Wawrinka going out to 39th ranked Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-0 in the 4th set.
Tomorrow will be a lighter day so that both girls are fresh for Wednesday but we’ll still have an early start to make sure we get a full court to play points on before everyone else turns up!
