Thursday 21st April 2011
It was a long day at the club today which included 2 training sessions, 2 meals and a tight doubles match!
To be able to get a full court to play a practise set we had to get up early and get to the centre before the main draw players turned up. So we were up at 6am, warming up at 6.40am and started the session at 7am. Dave played a set with his doubles partner Samm Butler and worked hard on his goals but found it difficult to find the balance between pace and weight of shot. After the session we walked back to the hotel for breakfast and reflected on the set planning goals for the next on court session at 11.30am.
We went back over to the club at 10.30am and watched the first set of Chris Throm-Jones before getting back on court with Samm and Jorge Wilton for a very good hour and a half doubles session. Everyone worked very hard and Dave found a much better level than he had earlier in the day which was exactly what he needed before the doubles match. After the session we congratulated Chris on a hard fought 3 set win, had some lunch and returned to the hotel to relax for a couple of hours – it’s always good to try not to spend too much time onsite when you have a late match otherwise you can get very tired from doing nothing but sitting in the sun watching other people compete.
Originally the match was scheduled for 6th round on which was supposed to be 2nd on after 1.30pm but, even though the match before Dave and Samm’s was moved, they didn’t end up getting on court until after 6pm.
Dave and Samm were taking on Stjepan Cagalj & Tomislav Draganja from Croatia and they started well breaking at 2-1 and maintaining the break until they took the set 6-3. In the second they broke early to lead 2-1 but lost their concentration and the Croatians started to gain momentum. At 3-4 Dave was broken and Cagalj held to take the set 6-3. It was quite a turnaround as the Croatians were very erratic for the first set and a half but instead of finishing them off when they were down Dave and Samm just waited for their opponents to miss. Unfortunately the opposite happened; the Croatians found their volleys and returns and increased their level again in the match tie-break. Dave and Samm went 5-0 down, got a couple of mini breaks back but soon found themselves 9-2 down. They then fought very hard to get back to 9-8 but Cagalj found a big first serve to take the match 3-6, 6-3, 10-8. Very disappointing but there were a lot of positives to take from it:
1) Dave’s level from the back of the court was superb
2) The boys only missed 7 1st serve returns between them and only 3 2nd serve returns in the whole match
3) Both of their 1st serve percentages increased as the match went on
By the time they were finished it was after 8pm so after a debrief we sat down with Samm, Chris and Jorge for dinner at the clubs restaurant.
It was a long day with a tough result at the end but the most important thing is that Dave achieved his goals for the day and put in 2 training sessions as well as a match. We’ll back up the learning points tomorrow with more on court work including a practise set on the hard court with Jorge to prepare Dave for his tournament in Malta next week.
