Wednesday 30th January 2013
It was a tough day at the Nairobi Sports Club today as Anais had a disappointing singles match but the quest for a title in week 1 is still alive as both Holly and Anais are still in the doubles ¼ finals.
We were all up early this morning for breakfast at 7am as Anais was first match on at 9am and Holly and Alex needed to warm up for their matches later in the day. We trained on court from 8-8.30am and despite every court being full on the booking sheet we managed to get a whole court each to warm up on! I trained with Alex while Holly and Anais hit together and after 30 minutes everyone was hitting well and ready for their matches.
After going through her pre-match goals and setting out her tactics for the match Anais went on court at 9am to face 8th seed Sasha Alexander from Australia. Holly had lost to Sasha in round 2 so we knew exactly what to expect; a big first serve, a spiny second serve but she can be quite inconsistent from the back of the court.
Anais started very nervously and after Sasha held in the opening game she struggled with her serve resulting in four double faults in her first service game. Anais then was 40-0* up in the very next game but failed to convert any of her break points and from that moment Sasha turned into a completely different player; she was much more confident from the back of the court and her 1st serve suddenly became very consistent. Anais managed to hold at *0-3 and then get a break back at 1-5* but too many unforced errors and not enough winners cost her as Sasha took the first set 6-2 with a total of 13 winners.
To her credit Anais came out in the 2nd set and was much more aggressive but by this stage Sasha’s confidence was very high and she was making a lot less unforced errors compared to when she played Holly. Anais went 0-2* down but managed to break back straight away only to struggle again in her own service games and give the break up. Anais was still struggling with her consistency and couldn’t quite get hold of the ball enough from the back of the court to put Sasha under pressure but she kept fighting hard throughout. After holding serve at *2-5 Anais made Sasha serve it out which she ended up doing very well to take the match 6-2, 6-3.
It was definitely a disappointing performance from Anais but she’s not one to dwell on a bad match and almost immediately after she’d finished she was back on court hitting some serves to get ready for her doubles ¼ final.
After getting some lunch together Holly and Anais were back on court with their partners at 1pm – Anais was playing for the first time with Alena Mashtakova from Russia who I met back in November in Mombasa and after winning a tight match yesterday Holly and Maria were set to take on the number 1 seeds. The difficulty was that Holly was on Centre court while Anais was on court 8 so I had to position myself on the top of one of the stands to Centre court so that I could see both courts!
Anais & Alena on court 8 …
… and Holly and Maria behind them on Centre court!
As both matches started the wind really began to pick up making conditions very difficult and both of our pairs struggled. They both went 1-4 down before both starting a bit of a fight back; Anais and Alena held, broke and then held again to level the scores and then the set went with serve until *4-5 when a huge storm came over to stop play. Holly and Maria also started coming back and after Maria managed to hold serve at *2-5 things were beginning to look much more promising – they ended up stopping at 3-5*, 15-15*.
The view of the rain flooding down from the referee’s hut
As the rain came hammering down we all rushed to the referee’s hut and then were kept there for 20 minutes before Patrick decided the courts weren’t going to dry so he suspended play for the day. Poor Alex had been eagerly waiting to go on for his consolation match just as the storm started so unfortunately he wasn’t able to play his match today but he will get on tomorrow.
The rest of the afternoon was spent stocking up on supplies at the supermarket, changing up money and sorting out the food bills at the hotel but as always there was time for some cards!! Like I said yesterday the forfeits are starting to get quite extreme so here’s a couple of the ones from today:
Holly always ends up getting the bad ones (I was in the final 2 though!)
But Yasmine’s was pretty special too!
The video of Yasmine’s immense knee slide is up on the Facebook page so check it out! www.facebook.com/itctennis1
Once we’d all recovered we headed out to dinner with the ever increasing “team” for a great dinner together.
Schedule for tomorrow:
(1) Dona Abo Habaga (EGY) & Nelise Verster (RSA) vs Holly Hutchinson (GBR) & Maria Ong (PHI) – 1st match at 9am (to finish 5-3, 15-15)
Margaux Bovy (BEL) & Nina Van Oost (BEL) vs (2) Alena Mashtkova (RUS) & Anais Nussaume (THA) – To Be Arranged after rest (to finish 5-4, 40-30)
Both winners to play later in the day
Alex Hagon (GBR) (UNR) vs John Lutaaya (UGA) (UNR) – 2nd match after 9am
