Saturday 3rd May 2014
It was a good start to the first tournament today as Toby came through his opening match in qualifying to move one match away from the Main Draw.
It was a very early start this morning with Toby and I meeting for breakfast at 6.20am and then getting the first bus to the club at 7am. Even though Toby was scheduled for the second match on court, we had to get the earlier bus in order to make our 8am practice session.
We went through our physical warm-up from 7.30-8am and then had a good practice session for half an hour. The time that we’ve spent on court over the last 3 days has really enabled Toby to become well acclimatised to the conditions and our hit this morning was one of the best that we’d had since we arrived. By the time Toby had warmed up everything he was feeling very confident and ready for his match.
While the first round of matches were on court Toby and I went through his pre-match sheet so that he had a clear game plan and also had specific goals for the match. At 10am the referee told us that Toby’s match was going to be moved to another court so we had 15 minutes to warm up before he went on court to take on Sam Bencheghib from France.
The first game of the match was a little edgy from both players but as soon as Toby broke Sam’s serve and then held to take a 2-0 lead he looked much more confident. Sam then played a good game to hold serve but Toby upped his level and started to dictate the points from the back of the court which lead to him holding and breaking to take a 4-1 lead. By this stage Toby was in full control of the match and he kept the pressure on his opponent to take the next two games and the first set, 6-1.
Toby continued to play well in the second set and even though he ended up taking it 6-0 there were some tight games with Sam competing hard throughout the match. Overall it was a good performance from Toby and, after having difficult qualifying matches in the three ITFs in Nairobi in February, it was great to see him get his first ITF singles win on the board!
After Toby had cooled down and stretched out we headed back to the hotel to get some lunch and watch Tottenham lose – sorry Toby!!
Many players might have decided to take the afternoon off after a first round match but Toby shared the same opinion as me that; an opportunity to practice is an opportunity to improve. We went back over to the club at 3pm and then had a very good session on court for just over an hour. The whole session was point based to get Toby ready for his final round of qualifying match tomorrow and he once again raised his level from this morning. After losing the match tie-break on Friday I had to get some revenge (which I did!) but I had a feeling that Toby was saving his best level for our final tie-break and he took me down 7-5. Many coaches might say that they wanted to boost their player’s confidence and so let them win but in this case Toby just played too well!!
Dinner tonight was again a recommendation from Toby but I’m very pleased to say that the Lasagne was nowhere near as spicy as the curry yesterday! During dinner we talked through the specifics from Toby’s match and went through his post-match sheet before setting up the game plan for his next match tomorrow.
We were then finally able to get on the internet (as it’s been down all day) which gave us a chance to catch up on everything Facebook / Twitter / Snapchat related!
Schedule for tomorrow:
Alosha Chikanda (ZIM) (UNR) vs Toby Huffer (GBR) (UNR) – 2nd match after 9.30am
