Wednesday 1st February 2012
It was a tough day at the Nairobi Club today as both Mia and Jack took difficult losses but a win in the doubles meant that Mia’s first week wasn’t quite over yet.
After a 7am breakfast we made our way over to the courts at 8am to complete our physical warm up for 30 minutes. We were expecting Mikey to join us for the on court session at 8.30am but another one of his nosebleed emergencies meant that I was subbed in to warm Mia up for her match! Jack and Tom had a good 45 minute hit to get Jack prepared for his doubles while on the other half court I hit with Mia to get her ready for her singles match against the number 1 seed.
After the session all the players went their separate way; Jack went back to the hotel to change, Tom went off to complete his daily strength and conditioning work and Mia relaxed with a bit of reading before completing her pre-match sheet.
At around 11.30am Mia took to the show court to take on Anastasiya Shetstakova from the Ukraine. I remember Anastasiya from last year when two of the Bath players played her and Devan and Beth also played against her in the semi-finals of the doubles. She was quite a handful last year so Mia was well prepared for some bad calls and gamesmanship but to our surprise she was on her best behaviour!
Mia decided to serve first in the match but some inconsistency with her serve and from the back of the court meant that she was broken immediately. She responded well though and went from 0-1 to 3-1 with some very patient and mature tennis which made the top seed look very ordinary. Unfortunately Mia’s level was not sustained and she was broken straight back. At this stage she was still 3-2 up with the match on serve but that game and the next one actually determined the rest of the match. With Mia limping due to a sore right knee Anastasiya took full advantage and made Mia work for every point which ultimately ended with Mia making an unforced error. The next 9 games followed that same pattern with Anastasiya making every ball back in court and Mia making far too many unforced errors. Those 9 games all went against Mia as she went down 6-3, 6-0.
It was a poor performance from Mia where she had a huge opportunity to take control of the match at 3-1 in the first set but a couple of games ended up costing her a possible ¼ final place.
It wasn’t long after Mia’s match that Jack and Mateusz were on court taking on 7th seeds Nimrod Berman from Israel and Alexandros-Georgios Vakouftsis from Greece. This was the third time that Jack had been in the last 32 of the doubles draw and so the third time that he was playing for his 1st ITF points.
All four players were serving well from the start and it looked like it would be difficult to break anyone of them but at 2-2* Jack and Mateusz made the breakthrough as they came back from 40-0 down to break Berman. From then on the set went with serve until Jack had the chance to hold to take the first set at *5-4. Up until this stage Jack had been serving at 90% first serves but after a double fault on the first point and then a missed high volley he was broken to level the set. From there it went to a very close tie-break which Jack and Mateusz ended up losing 7-5.
Even though they had lost the first set I thought they were the better pair and I really expected them to come back and take the 2nd set. Unfortunately Mateusz seemed to completely lose all of his confidence after the first set which meant that he only made 1 first serve and only made 2 service returns in the whole of the second set. Jack tried hard to pick him up throughout the set and did a good job of holding his serve twice but there’s only so much you can do on your own and the boys ended up losing 7-6(5), 6-2. Jack was very disappointed as it was a good opportunity to pick up some points but, like with his singles, his doubles was much better than in Burundi and I know he’s going to get his first ITF points on the board within the next 2 weeks.
Mia was on court right after Jack’s match and her and Latvian Anastasija Homutova were taking on Kasandra Kozub from Poland and Krystyna Shumlianska from Ukraine. Mia seemed to have put the disappointment of her singles match behind her and her and Anastasija teamed up well to race through the first set 6-1. They were pegged back in the second set but did well in the match tie-break to eventually take the match 6-1, 4-6, 10-6.
Mikey joined us again for dinner this evening before he flies home tomorrow but, due to a loss to Jack at “touch tennis” today, he ended up completing a forfeit of crawling around the restaurant on his hands and knees. The staff had no idea what was going on but we had a great laugh at his expense!
It’s just down to Mia now as she plays the ¼ final of her doubles tomorrow while the boys will be putting in a tough days training before they have a rest day on Friday.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Anastasija Homutova (LAT) & Mia Smith (GBR) vs (2) Nikita Dawda (KEN) & Joanna-Nena Savva (CYP) – 3rd match after 9.30am (not before 12pm)
