Sunday 3rd May 2015
We had a good start to the week here in Windhoek today as Toby played a solid match to get through his first round and qualify for the Main Draw.
Due to the later start time of matches today, Toby had a bit of a lie-in while I was up early at 5am to watch the Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight. When we talk about tactics in tennis it comes as second nature but I find it so interesting to analyse the tactics used in other sports and the fight this morning was unbelievably tactical. It was brilliant to watch and even though many people have said the fight was “boring” I think that’s because they don’t appreciate how big a part tactics played in it – they just wanted big punches and a knockout which was never going to happen with these two phenomenal fighters.
Back to business out here and we met for breakfast at 8.30am and then got a car to the club at 9.45am. Even though Toby’s match was scheduled for 1pm we had to warm-up, hit and also have time to digest lunch before he had to warm-up again for the match. With that in mind we hit for 30 minutes from 10.30-11am and then walked up the road to the supermarket to get some lunch.
Once we returned to the club we had around 30 minutes to relax and then at 12.30pm we headed down to Centre Court to warm-up and most importantly go through the goals and game plan for the match.
As Toby went onto court at 1pm he was in a relaxed mood and was keen to improve on the level that he produced in the early rounds of last week’s tournament. We knew very little about Alex Van Der Westhuizen but as soon as the warm-up started I felt confident that Toby could impose his game on his opponent and also use it as a good opportunity to continue to work on some specifics that we’ve been developing in training.
Toby broke Alex’s serve in the first game of the match and from there he settled into the match very well racing to a 4-0* lead. Alex then held serve with a series of good first serves but Toby responded with 3 winners in the next game and then broke serve to take the first set 6-1.
During the second set Toby raised his level again and even though the set score was the same as the first he produced a higher first serve percentage, almost three times the amount of service winners and twice the amount of winners from the back of the court.
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Toby moving forwards to finish the point at the net during the 2nd set
All in all it was a good performance from Toby and compared to his first round match last week it was much much better. Toby was also pleased with his performance especially as the conditions were very hot and humid and he did well to get the job done without wasting energy by playing more games than necessary.
After the match we had over an hour to wait until the shuttle back to the hotel so we decided to watch some of the other Qualifying matches and also have a few games of table tennis as a ‘cool down’ – for me it was more of a warm-up as not before long I was sweating and getting rather competitive!
Once the car arrived we went to the supermarket to stock up on some supplies and then headed back to the hotel. Toby then decided he was going to have a swim in the pool so I joined him but it turn out to be more of an ice bath recovery session rather than a relaxing swim!
During dinner tonight the draw came out and we were both surprised to see two ‘lucky losers’ playing each other in the opening round tomorrow:
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Boy’s Singles Main Draw
Schedule for tomorrow:
Toby Huffer (GBR) (UNR) vs Hugo Morgan (RSA) (UNR) – 3rd match after 8.30am (not before 10.30am)
Doubles with Leon Olivier (RSA) to follow in the afternoon
