Friday 9th May 2014
It was a good final day of preparation today . . . or so we thought until 6.30pm this evening!
We were up early again this morning to have breakfast at 6.30am and then get the 7am shuttle to the club. Like yesterday we went straight on court when we arrived to warm up for half an hour and then we had a really good hour of drilling and point play. We spent the first half an hour working on specific areas of Toby’s groundstrokes before warming up volleys and serves. We then finished the session with a couple of tie-breaks where Toby played at a superb level to take the first one 10-5. Lucky (for me!) I managed to sneak the second one before we lost the court to the main draw matches.
Straight after the session we went upstairs into the clubhouse to go through a good 25 minute core session and then finished our morning’s training with a thorough stretch out.
For the whole of last week the shuttle bus that takes us to and from the club had been on time but this week the drive has been slacking a bit! So, instead of getting the bus back at 9.30am, we had to get a lift with one of the parents as the bus didn’t turn up at all! Once we got back to the hotel we showered and changed and then headed to the restaurant at around 11.30am to get some lunch.
The early part of the afternoon was spent with Toby doing a good couple of hours of school work and me planning the tournaments over the summer. Then at 3pm we went to reception to get the shuttle to take us back to the club but guess what? It didn’t show up again! Lucky the hotel receptionist was able to give us a lift but as there were 6 of us we had to do it in 2 trips.
Brandon Levendale joined us for our afternoon session and, after warming up, the boys went straight into a practice set. Brandon had an excellent start to the set and took a 3-0 lead but Toby fought back to win the next two games and stay within touching distance of his doubles partner. The next two games were very tight with both boys playing at a high level but it was Brandon that won both games. Even though Toby was 2-5 down he remained positive and competed hard on each point to break and then hold his serve to get within one game of levelling the set at 4-5. However, after another tight game, it was Brandon who went on to take the set 6-4. The boys finished the session with a tie-break to 10 points and again it was Brandon that came out on top despite another close battle.
After cooling down and stretching out Toby signed in for Qualifying and then we got the bus back to the hotel. It was only at 6.30pm when the Qualifying draw came out that we realised that Toby had moved up into the main draw so we have another couple of days of training before he’ll play his first match on Monday. The positive is that we’ve got another two days to prepare for the Main Draw but the downside is that Toby was really looking forward to competing tomorrow!
Here’s the (rather empty) Qualifying draw:
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