Saturday 11th February 2012
It was celebrations all round today as not only was it Jack’s 17th birthday but also both Jack and Tom got into qualifying after being 14th and 15th alternate before sign in.
There was no lie in for the birthday boy this morning as we all met for breakfast at 7am and then were over at the tennis centre warming up by 8am. We then had a good hour and a half on court from 8.30 – 10am where the goal was for the players to just get back into a good rhythm after having yesterday off. The practice courts always play their best early in the morning after they’ve just been watered and rolled so we took full advantage and did a lot of drilling from the back of the court before finishing with some serve and return practise.
At 10am it was time for everyone to go through their strength and conditioning programmes which for the boys included a lot of mobilisation work to make sure they ready for their qualifying matches tomorrow. Mia follows a programme which indicates what she has to do depending on how many days there are to go until her next singles match so today’s programme was 2 sets of Plyometrics training.
At 11am we went back to the hotel to shower and then all met up out on the terrace overlooking the cricket pitch to finally celebrate Jack’s birthday. He had a lot of cards to open including one from me and the other players but I think the cards he valued the most were the ones from his family in England which had chocolate bars inside!! There’s a strict rule on all the ITC trips that no-one (including myself) is allowed any junk food on the trip but the only exception is when it’s your birthday! I tried to bring out a “Colin the Caterpillar” cake from M&S but it would have past it’s “eat by date” by the end of January so instead I brought some M&S mini chocolate treats. The players were delighted when I brought them out and we all enjoyed them along with our lunch.
We were then back on court from 1.30 – 3pm where the players had all arranged to play practice sets / points with other players so I spent the hour and a half going between 3 different courts making sure they were happy with everything in their games. Everyone performed well and the boys felt in great shape so now it was down to whether they would get in or not!
After the boys had signed in they were still 8 and 9 out of qualifying so it was then just a bit of a waiting game to see if anyone didn’t turn up to sign in. We decided to go back to the hotel to get ready to go out for dinner before returning to the courts just before 6pm to see if they’d get in. By this stage the referee could have just told us there and then if the boys were in or not but he spent ages messing us around before finally letting both of them know that they had just scraped in – out of 24 players Jack was number 22 and Tom was number 23.
With huge smiles on the boy’s faces we left the club and walked down to the Fairview Hotel to celebrate Jack’s birthday in style. We all had a fantastic dinner and Tony had organised a huge birthday cake for Jack (with even more chocolate in it!!) which we all enjoyed immensely!
The Birthday Boy with his huge cake
Schedule for tomorrow:
Akram El Sallaly (EGY) (UNR) vs Tom Hulme (GBR) (UNR) – 1st match at 9am
Jack Large (GBR) (UNR) vs Daniel Kirsch (AUT) (UNR) – 1st match at 9am
Last round qualifying matches to be scheduled later in the day.
