Friday 1st February 2013
As week 1 leads into week 2 here at the Nairobi Sports Club Alex put the final touches to his preparation with two very good consolation matches while the girls had a lighter day.
As Alex was scheduled for 3rd match on today we all had a bit of a lie in and then met for breakfast at 8.15m. Anais and Holly had the option of a rest day today as they don’t play until Sunday but Anais wanted to spend more time on court to get a better feel for the ball and Holly wanted to keep up to date with her physical conditioning programme so she planned in her injury prevention work.
We all headed over to the courts at 9.30am so that Alex could go through his physical warm up before he hit with Jay Clarke from 10 – 10.30am. During the session Alex hit very well and even though he had to deal with a very heavy ball coming off Jay’s racket he knew that it would prepare him well for his first match.
After completing his pre-match sheet we had a brief chat about what we wanted to get out of this set and then Alex went on court around 10.45am to play Shabani Kabura from Burundi. After losing the first game Alex really upped his level and played some of the best tennis I have ever seen him play; he was dominating the points from the back of the court and found a very consistent but aggressive level with his serve too. Alex won the next 6 games in a row to take the match 6-1 and his stats were very impressive; 65% 1st serves in, 12 winners and only 8 unforced errors leaving him with a very good aggressive balance of +4. After the match Alex was very pleased with his performance and decided he wanted to play his final consolation match rather than just have a training session in the afternoon.
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Alex sliding into a dropshot and then hitting an angle winner
Not long after Alex had finished Anais and I went off to warm up for her only tennis session of the day and we were very lucky to get on one of the better match courts for a really good session for an hour and a half. Anais had been disappointed with her results last week and knew that her best tennis is still within her – our job now is to get her to perform at that level this week. During the training we worked on a lot of specifics around the quality of her groundstrokes and then we played a lot of points towards the end of the session so that she felt confident to do what she needed to do under a little more pressure. We played 3 sets of points and I just about managed scrape the first two up to 11 sets but for the last one we played up to 7 and her level was much too good which resulted in me getting my hands and nose dirty as we had 10 press-ups riding on it!!
Once we were done we just about had enough time to go back to the hotel, order some food, shower and change, eat the food and then get back to the courts before Alex went on for his last consolation match at 2.30pm against Tumaini Meshuko from Tanzania. Tumaini had taken the number 2 seed in the main draw to 3 sets earlier in the week so Alex was really up for another good match. The first 3 games went with serve until Alex got broken at *1-2 and even though he was struggling with the condition of the courts Alex still managed to find a really good hitting level against a good opponent. At *2-5 down Alex kept digging deep and fighting hard for each game which resulted in him winning the next 3 games in a row to level the set at 5-5. Both players then held serve to take the match into a deciding tie-break. Just like the 12 games in the set the tie-break was very close but when Alex managed to get ahead to lead *5-4 it was looking as though he would finished it off. Unfortunately Alex hit 3 unforced errors in the next 3 points to lose the set 7-6 but on each of the last 3 points he performed very well and his mistakes only came from going for the right shot at the right time which was great to see. It was another very positive match and if Alex can perform at that level in the Qualifying tomorrow then he has a great chance of getting through.
Following the match Alex signed in and then went through his prescribed injury prevention and stretching exercises which ended a very good day’s preparation. All three players then had some time to themselves but the girls decided that they wanted to play some Frisbee so out came my Aerobie Pro and we had some good fun throwing it around the cricket pitch!
Dinner tonight was once again at the Fairview Hotel and after having a few nights where the group was getting bigger and bigger it was nice to just have 8 of us – it was good for Anais too as there were less people to watch her forfeit of doing cartwheels around the swimming pool!!
Boy’s Qualifying Draw
Schedule for tomorrow:
Marco Prochazka (AUT) (UNR) vs Alex Hagon (GBR) (UNR) – 1st match at 9am
Winner to play last round qualifying later in the day
