Nairobi U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 2

Saturday 3^rd February 2013

It was another tough 1^st round qualifying match for Alex today while the girl’s trained hard and put the finishing touches to their preparation before their main draw matches tomorrow.

As Alex was scheduled for 1^st match on at 9am we met for breakfast at just before 7am and then made our way over to the courts to warm up at 7.40am. Once Alex and Jay had completed their physical warm up we walked over to the court to find that the lines had been put down but the net hadn’t been put up – it’s the same most days but today we decided not to wait for the groundsman to do it and so the 3 of us got stuck in!

Alex and Jay had a really good hit for 30 minutes and then Alex and I went over towards the clubhouse to go through his pre-match sheet and set goals before he went on. We both knew that it was going to be a tough match today as Marco Prochazka from Austria had made the last 16 in the first tournament but we were feeling positive as Alex was going into the match full of confidence after his consolation matches.

Alex began the match well breaking Marco in the opening game and then holding serve to take a 2-0 lead but Marco immediately stepped up his level to hold and break back to level the set at 2-2. At this stage Alex had to make a decision; did he continue to play to play the way that he had to go 2-0 up or did he sense that Marco was getting into his stride and then respond by upping his own level to be more aggressive? Unfortunately Alex chose to stick with the way that he started the set and that meant that Marco could step up and dominate most of the points to take control of the set. The next 4 games went against Alex as he lost the first set 6-2 but Marco’s 12 winners and only 8 unforced errors from 2-0 down were quite impressive stats.

Alex tried to respond in the second set by going for more and trying to get Marco out of his comfort zone but unfortunately the Austrian was well into his stride now and dictated almost every point. Alex ended up losing the second set 6-0 and despite being very disappointed when he came off the court he realised that his opponent was just a lot stronger both in terms of physical size and quality of the tennis that he produced. We had a good chat after the match and talked about the kind of game that Alex is aiming to produce at 15/16 years old and how each match at the moment is just adding to his development as a payer.

I left Alex at the hotel to shower and change while I went back to the courts to be on court with Anais for her first session of the day. Anais trained with Josh Liu who is the number 2 seed in the boy’s main draw and a good friend of hers. Josh and his dad had just arrived last night from Singapore but the altitude and the courts didn’t affect him at all which was great for Anais and both of them ended up having a really good practice for an hour. At 12pm Holly came on court so I left Anais and Josh to continue their practice while Holly and I went on the next court to start her training session. Despite the practice courts being in the worst state that I’ve seen them all week we ended up having a good session and ended with some really good points.

By this stage everyone was hungry so Anais and I went back to the hotel to get some lunch while Holly and Alex stayed with some of the other players at the club to eat there.

The next session of the day was at 3pm and this was the main session for the girls to get a lot of point play in so that they felt comfortable before their matches tomorrow. Alex joined the session to work on things from his match earlier in the day and we were also joined by Gil de Keyser from Belgium so all four players could compete against each other. By 4pm we were done so Anais and Alex went off to cool down and stretch out while Holly waited for her last session of the day at 5pm with Alena Mashtakova. Holly just wanted a short session to get more of a feel for the ball and both girls worked well together for 30 minutes before the groundstaff kicked us off the court to prepare it for tomorrow.

While we were at dinner the draw came out and can you believe Holly and Anais are once again in the same section of the draw?!

Schedule for tomorrow:

(WC) Alvas Wahome (KEN) (UNR) vs Holly Hutchinson (GBR) (1615) – 2^nd match after 9am

(5) Anais Nussaume (THA) (582) vs Sasha Alexander (AUS) (1136) – 4^th match after 9am