Nairobi U18 ITF Grade 5 (week 1), Day 5

Wednesday 8th February 2012

It was a day of mixed emotions today as on one hand Mia had a tough 1st round doubles loss but on the other hand Jack had some huge good fortune as he managed to get an alternate into the boy’s doubles.

Each day is now following a very similar pattern as the only time we’re almost guaranteed a court is between 8 – 9.30am. We’ve actually got to the stage where there’s no point in going over to the courts in the evening to make a booking as it seems everyone knows that we “own” that time slot on court 6!!

We started the session with all 4 of us training until 8.30am when Mia met up with her doubles partner and went on the court behind to go through their pre-match warm up. Tom and Jack stayed with me and we got down to some tough drilling for half an hour before Mia rejoined us to end the session with some points. I must add that during the session both Tom and Mia ended up covered in clay; Tom due to an almighty fall (which was very amusing to us but he wasn’t impressed!) while it was Mia’s nose and hands that got covered due to a few “accidental” press-ups that she had to do!

After the session there was just enough time for Mia to write her pre-match sheet, talk through her tactics with me and get a bite to eat before her and Alessandra Gisonna from Italy were on Centre Court for their doubles 1st round match.

They were taking on Anastasiya Shestakova (who Mia lost to in singles last week) and Krystyna Shumlianska (who Mia beat in the doubles last week) from the Ukraine and so it was a good chance for Mia to get some revenge. From the start though it was obvious that it was going to be a very tough match as both of the Ukrainian girls were very solid and quite quick at the net. Mia held serve to make it 1-1 in the first set but that was to be the last game our girls won in the entire match as they ended up losing 6-1, 6-0. Despite the score line Mia actually played quite well; she moved more at the net and finished more 1st volleys than her partner but unfortunately there weren’t enough of those types of play on consecutive points to get games on the board.

She was disappointed after the match but the big positive was that her energy levels and her communication were much better than last week so hopefully it’ll all come together next week for the final event of the trip.

I decided to go back to the hotel for lunch as the food at the Club hasn’t been very good for the last few days and it also gave me a chance to get on with some work on the computer. After I’d been gone for about an hour Tom came racing over the cricket pitch to ask if I’d seen Jack as he had a chance of getting into the doubles as an Alternate. Tom thought that Jack, Dawn and Mia might have gone to the local shop so with that I left everything in the restaurant at the hotel and raced out the front door and up the road to the shops. By the time I got there I was completely out of breath but just about managed to communicate to Jack that he needs to get back to the tournament site as soon as possible!

When we got to the referee’s desk we were told that there were 2 spaces in the doubles draw as 2 seeds had withdrawn so any pairs that wanted to sign in had 10 minutes to do so. Jack then raced over to the Public Service Club where his partner was practising to get him back on site to sign in. After about 20 minutes of coaches and players arguing that Alternates shouldn’t be allowed to sign in that late (which officially they shouldn’t be allowed to but I wasn’t going to say anything!) they finally did the draw. At this point I gave Jack some advice on which chip to choose and low and behold he picked himself and he was in the draw! As Jack and Maxim took the place of seeds they will now play tomorrow for their first ITF points.

After that crazy hour Tom and Mia were back on court over at the Public Service Club; Tom played a set with a local Kenyan boy and played very well while Mia worked on her serve on the next court for an hour. At 4pm Jack joined us and still had a huge smile on his face – funny how it was a little different a few days ago when he didn’t get the wildcard!! We all then returned to the club and the players went through their injury prevention work before stretching out to end a bit of a rollercoaster of a day.

For dinner tonight we met up with the South African Twins and their mum for a really nice meal at the Fairview Hotel and then returned to the Nairobi Club for some more team charades. Both Mia and I had to deal with teams that weren’t quite with it this evening – Mia managed to get her team to “The Globe Theatre” but no-one was guessing “Shakespeare” while I managed to get my team to “ The ….shank Redemption” but no-one could complete the title. We eventually both got our teams to guess the correct answer but not without a lot of steam coming out of our ears!!

Schedule for tomorrow (and for the 1st time this week Jack’s name is on the board!):

(ALT) Maxim Dmitriev (RUS) & Jack Large (GBR) vs Costin Economu (ROU) & Francesco Migliano (ITA) – 1st match at 10am