Namibia U18 ITF Grade 4, Day 5

Monday 5^th May 2014

A straightforward match for Toby today saw him through to the 2^nd round of the Main Draw where he’ll face the no.2 seed tomorrow.

I woke this morning at 5.30am to the heart-breaking news that Elena Baltacha had died of liver cancer yesterday. I have known Bally for many years and had been at many of the same tournaments that she played while she was on her way up the rankings to the top 50 in the world. One of my favourite memories of Bally was when I came on court after the first set of a doubles match that her and Naomi Cavaday were playing on centre court at the Eastbourne WTA event. In WTA events you are allowed to call your coach on at either a chance of ends or the end of the set and, after losing the first set 7-6, the girls called me on. As I was explaining to them what they needed to adjust in the match, Bally’s passion and willingness to listen was so intense that it actually made me laugh out loud and I completely forgot what I was going to say! She was an amazing person, a true fighter and a perfect role model for any up and coming player – she will be missed by everyone that ever had the fortune to have met her.

Toby and I had breakfast at 6.20am and then got the 7am shuttle bus to the club. Like yesterday, we were at the club very early but we would have missed our practice session if we had got the later 9.30am bus. After warming up, Toby had a good hit with his doubles partner, Brandon Levendale, from 8 – 8.30am before the first matches went on court.

We knew we would have a bit of waiting around today, but after going through all of our preparations for the match we saw that the first match on Toby’s court was almost finished. The next match was over pretty quickly too and even though Toby’s match had a ‘not before 11am’ time, both him and his opponent agreed to go on early at 10.45am.

We knew nothing about Clemens Roeber apart from the fact that he was from Namibia and he was unranked. As is the case with many events in Africa, the qualifying draw can often be tougher to get through compared to many of the opening matches in the Main Draw and that was definitely true of Toby’s match today. Toby started a little slowly and even though he broke in the 1^st game, he gave up his serve cheaply in the very next game with 2 double faults and 2 unforced errors. It’s often tough to raise your own level when you’re not getting into much of a rhythm in a match but to his credit Toby stayed focussed and won the next 11 games in a row to take the match 6-1, 6-0.

Following the match I took toby through a long cool down and stretching session before we got a lift back to the hotel from the president of the Namibian Tennis Association. Over lunch we discussed the match and both agreed on the positives and the areas that we wanted to work on before the next round.

Our regular routine this week has been to get back on court in the afternoon after Toby’s matches and today he wanted to do the same to work on a few specific areas. So, at 3pm we got the bus back to the club and went straight on court to warm up with Brandon. Before the boys hit, I decided that we would do a quick 5 ball fan sprint to get them nice and sharp. I explained that 15.5 seconds was very quick, 15.5-16.5 seconds was good and anything over 16.5 seconds wasn’t quite good enough! Toby went first and put in a 16.77s and Brandon was all over the place on his sprint missing one of the pick-ups and ending up with 18.22s. The boys then challenged me to do better and were convinced that I would be slower because I hadn’t warmed up and was in my running shoes! I then put in a steady 15.89s . . . not bad for someone almost 20 years older than them!!

The boys managed to get over their disappointment of me beating them and put in a good training session for an hour. We covered the areas that Toby wanted to work on, then worked on some doubles specifics before their 1^st round match tomorrow and finished with some open point play.

Once we had cooled down and stretched out we got the bus back to the hotel via the supermarket to stock up on some water . . . just the 25 litres worth – should do us for a few days!!

We had another good dinner at the hotel tonight where Toby finally got the chicken pasta that he’d wanted for the last few days. There was then just a enough time for Toby, Sophie, Brendon and I to discuss who had the best taste in music (definitely me!) before it was time for an early night.

Schedule for tomorrow:

(q) Toby Huffer (GBR) (UNR) vs (2) Kris Van Wyk (RSA) (268) – 3^rd match after 8.30am (not before 11am)

Toby Huffer (GBR) & Brandon Levendale (ZIM) vs Tino Yannick Dahlem (GER) & James Roelofse (RSA) – 5th match after 8.30am (not before 1pm)