Saturday 2nd May 2015
A good final day of preparation today and now we’re all set for Toby’s 1st round match tomorrow.
The day before any player competes in a tournament is very important and wherever possible I like the player to dictate when they want to train, how long they want to train for and also the content of the session(s). That is so that the player feels happy and works on exactly what they feel they need to in order to feel ready for their match. Toby had the option of a lie-in this morning but instead he chose to follow the same routine as we did yesterday. That meant we were up for breakfast at 8am and then at the club warming up at 9.30am. We then had a really good training session for just over an hour which saw us do a lot of ‘trading’ from the back of the court to find a good consistency and then go into a lot of point play. While we were warming up some serves, Leon Olivier, who is in the Main Draw this week, asked if Toby wanted to play some points and so Toby finished the session with a very solid 10-2 win in a Match Tie-break.
For lunch today we decided to eat at the club and we were very pleased with a great spaghetti bolognaise that the tournament director’s wife had made for the players – hopefully she’ll keep that quality of lunches up all week! Toby also wanted to get a few snacks from the supermarket so we headed up there after we’d eaten to get some nuts, fruit and the all-important chewing gum!
When we returned to the club Toby chilled out while I had a good catch-up with Pieter Hoeksma who is the tournament referee this week. I first met Pieter at this tournament last year and he’s a great guy; he reminds me a lot of British referee Andy Fyfe and is the kind of guy that’s very honest, a strict referee who gets respect from all the players but is also very fair.
At 1.30pm Toby and I started warming up for our second session of the day and at 2pm we got on court to prepare to finish the set we started yesterday. Despite feeling pretty exhausted I managed to win the first point which saw me break Toby to take a *2-1 lead and from there the set went with serve until 5-3*. Toby was actually playing the better tennis and I was struggling to control the ball having just got my racket back from the stringer but I think a bit of dogged determination managed to get me through the set 6-3.
Once we were done Toby had a thorough stretch out at the club and then at 3.30pm we headed back to the hotel to relax for the afternoon. We then met back up at 6.30pm for dinner and had a brief chat about preparations for the match tomorrow before relaxing for the rest of the evening.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Toby Huffer (GBR) (UNR) vs Alex Van Der Westhuizen (RSA) (UNR) – 1st match at 1pm
