Namibia U18 ITF Grade 4, Day 1

Thursday 1^st May 2014

It’s was a long 20 hours of travel but we finally arrived in Windhoek, Namibia today for the next stop on the ITC calendar.

After negotiating the London Underground on day 2 of the strikes I finally got to Heathrow to meet Toby Huffer at around 6pm. I spent last Friday on court with Toby and his coach, Marten Renstrom, at Dukes Meadows high performance centre which gave me the chance to get to know Toby and also speak with Marten about the areas he would like me to focus on with Toby at the two tournaments.

After we checked in we got some dinner and then boarded the 11 hour flight to Johannesburg. Luckily we managed to get some exit seats which meant we were both able to get some sleep – I think I managed to get a little more than Toby though as I was passed out for almost the whole flight!!

Once we arrived in Johannesburg we had a 4 hour stopover before our final 2 hour flight to Namibia. It then took us almost 45 minutes to clear a very busy Customs but once we finally got through we were met by the tournament bus driver who took us, and Sophie Gerits and her father from Belgium, to the tournament hotel.

As the altitude here in Windhoek is around 1,600 metres it is important that we get as much time as possible on court before qualifying starts on Saturday. So, with that in mind we checked in at the hotel at 4pm and then went straight to the club to get a good hour of practice with Sophie before the sun went down.

While we were on court we had a few visitors including a mean looking wasp, a huge centipede and this:

After training Toby cooled down and stretched out before we headed back to the hotel to get some dinner and relax after a very long day!