Monday 6th February 2012
It’s been another long day on and off the court at the Nairobi Club today which included the high of one of the boys getting into the doubles but the low of Mia suffering a first round singles defeat.
The boys and I are getting used to seeing the sun come up over the cricket pitch now as all of our sessions are starting early but this morning’s training was made even more difficult for me as I’d been up all night with a dodgy stomach! I managed to get a little bit of food down at breakfast before we were all warming up at 7.30am to start the session at 8am.
Today’s morning session was probably the best one we’d had since the trip begun; Jack and Tom were both working as hard as ever but their quality of hitting had increased significantly since day 1 and Tom was really started to push Jack from the back of the court. The session seemed to fly by which is always a good sign but by 9.15am I was starting to get a little concerned as Mia wasn’t on site warming up. Once we finished at 9.30am I saw Dawn who informed me that Mia had endured a similar night to me and was feeling pretty rough so had decided to stay at the hotel.
It was only at about 9.45am that the referee finally released the girl’s draw and we saw that Mia was scheduled for 3rd match on against Iva Ivkovic from Serbia (the girl she played a practice set with on Saturday!). With that Dawn made her way back over to the hotel to get Mia and, after she’d had a good warm up, we finally managed to get on court for a pre-match hit from 10.45 – 11.15am.
After the session Mia looked worse than before and it was obvious that she was feeling pretty weak. Luckily the 1st round match on Centre Court had gone to 3 sets so it gave Mia sometime to eat, relax and try to get in the right frame of mind to compete.
She took to the court just after 12.30pm and it was obvious from the start that this was going to be a very difficult match; Mia was still struggling with how she was feeling and Iva was not in the mood for giving out any sympathy! Mia served first and lead 40-15 in the opening game but 3 unforced errors lead to her being broken. That then lead to Mia struggling with her consistency throughout the set and Iva took full advantage winning the next 6 games in a row to lead 6-0, 1-0. Iva was just playing a solid game; she didn’t have anything big in her game but was patient and quite happy to wait for Mia to miss.
Mia on Centre Court against Iva Ivkovic from Serbia
Mia staged a mini comeback and actually lead 2-1 in the 2nd set but a total of 38 unforced errors and only 9 winners lead to her going down 6-0, 6-2. It wasn’t a good performance from Mia but considering the way she was feeling before she went on the court I think she did well to work hard throughout the match and put up a bit of a fight in the 2nd set.
After Mia’s singles we checked the doubles draw and found out that Tom had been awarded a wildcard into the draw with Akim Ntwali from Rwanda. Jack was obviously disappointed not to get into the draw but he turned his attention to his second session of the day and had a good 45 minute hit with one of the Polish boys. Tom also got back on court this afternoon with his Russian hitting partner and had a long 2 hour + session where they managed to almost play a whole match. Tom lost the first set 6-1 but fought back well to take the second set 6-4 and then the boys decided to play a match tie-break for the third where Tom eventually went down 10-4. He was really pleased with his performance and his high level from the session this morning was again reproduced this afternoon. He was even more pleased with the afternoon session though as he was able to reproduce that level in point play rather than just in drilling.
For dinner tonight we again went to the Fairview hotel but decided to go to one of their other restaurants at the back of the hotel by the swimming pool. The food was of the same high standard as usual and, on the recommendation of the waiter, I went for the Mango Chicken. I did think it would just be chicken with a mango sauce but was delighted to have this presented in front of me:
Schedule for tomorrow:
Yuval Barak (ISR) & Nimrod Berman (ISR) vs Tom Hulme (GBR) & Akim Ntwali (RWA) – 5th match after 9am (not before 2pm)
Anastasiya Shestakova (UKR) & Krystyna Shumlianska (UKR) vs Alessandra Gisonna (ITA) & Mia Smith (GBR) – 6th match after 9am
