Nairobi U18 ITF Grade 5 (week 2), Day 3

Monday 13th February 2012

The boy’s and girl’s main draws were under way today which meant a chance for Jack to get his first main draw win and also his first win against an ITF ranked player while a win for Mia would move her into the top 1000 in the world U18.

Even though Tom is out of singles he still needed to sign in for a Lucky Loser place for the main draw and he also had to sign in for doubles today so he joined Jack, Mia and me in our warm ups at 7.40am. As it turned out I didn’t need to warm up as Jack’s 1st round qualifying opponent asked if he could hit with Jack this morning so while they practised on one half court Tom and Mia warmed up on the other. As Jack and Mia were not scheduled to play until later in the day they decided to train for an hour this morning so after their normal pre-match hit for 30 minutes they then went on to play points for the next 30 minutes – I came in to play points with Jack while Tom and Mia played together on the next court.

After the session we walked the short distance to the supermarket to get some water and food before returning to the club to prepare for the matches.

Jack was 3rd match after 9am on Centre Court and ended up going on just before 11.45am to play his doubles partner from the 1st week; Mateusz Izycki from Poland. Jack got off to a great start thanks to some very erratic play from Mateusz which included 6 doubles faults in his first 2 service games!! Mateusz held while 4-0 down but that was to be the last game of the set that he won as Jack stormed to a 6-1 lead playing some very smart and consistent tennis.

During the second set Jack’s serve started to let him down and he was broken early at 1-1 but managed to break back immediately to level the set again at 2-2. By this stage Mateusz had changed his play and had become a lot more patient in the rally, he wasn’t hitting many more winners from the back of the court but he was making Jack miss more. At 2-2 Jack was broken again and never managed to get the break back as he went down 6-4 in the 2nd set.

After a brief delay while the court was swept and re-lined Jack opened the 3rd set with a good hold of serve but at 1-1 he again struggled with his service consistency and was comfortably broken whilst only making 1 out of 6 1st serves. He was then down in the 1-2* game but fought hard to break and then won the next 3 games in a row to take a 5-2 lead. Normally I would say that at this stage the match would be in the bag but Jack’s never won a singles main draw match and I think this played on his mind a little. Mateusz held at 2-5 which meant that Jack would have to serve the match out. The nerves however got the better of him and he played a very poor game gifting his opponent the break. Jack responded very professionally and after some strong encouragement from Dawn and I Jack managed to break back to take the match 6-1, 4-6, 6-4 in just under 2 hours and 20 minutes. We were all absolutely thrilled with his win especially as he had to fight so hard to come through it – now just one more win tomorrow to get some points on the board!

There was about an hours break between when Jack came off and when Mia went on to face Waitherero Memba from Kenya so we used the time to go through Mia’s pre-match sheet and set her some goals. We’d not seen her opponent play before but some of her results suggested she was quite a weak player so our goals were all based around what Mia could do to make sure she improved a lot from the match.

During the first 4 games Mia performed very well and stuck to all of the pre-match goals that we had set which meant that she was not only 4-0 up but also improving a huge amount while winning. However she then struggled with her own service game and reacted badly to losing it which resulted in a complete turnaround in her performance. She took the first set 6-1 and then went on to win the 2nd set 6-0 but failed to really improve much after the first 4 games of the match. It was obvious at the end that she wasn’t happy with her performance so she stayed on court with Dawn to work on her serve and then completed some fitness work while I took Jack and Tom off for an early dinner in preparation for Jack’s 2nd round match tomorrow.

It was quite a contrasting day as Jack had to fight really hard for his win while Mia’s was quite straightforward but out of the two players I think Jack made the most of his opportunities today. If Mia had kept up the level she had found in the first 4 games of the match I’m sure she would have been just as happy as Jack even though the match was much easier. They’re both through to the next round though and have another chance to pick up points and improve the level of their games tomorrow. The win also takes Mia inside the top 1000 for the first time which is a great effort for a 13 year old!

Schedule for tomorrow:

(LL) Victoria Voinova (RUS) (1156) vs Mia Smith (GBR) (1031) – 3rd match after 9am (not before 12pm)

(WC) Gut Orly Iradukunda (BDI) (555) vs (LL) Jack Large (GBR) (UNR) – 3rd match on after 9am (not before 12pm)

To follow after rest:

Alessandra Gisonna (ITA) & Mia Smith (GBR) vs Liliana Araucz (POL) & Michelle Onyancha (KEN)

Wiktor Bielawski (POL) & Anatole Bizimana (RWA) vs Jack Large (GBR) & Alexandros-Georgios Vakouftsis (GRE)