Norway U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 1

Monday 16th November 2015

Following the Luxembourg ITF last week, Toby Huffer and I were on the road once again for the second of our three ITFs in November and the destination this week is Stavanger in Norway.

Last night we stayed in a hotel at Heathrow airport as we needed to check-in this morning at 6am and we didn’t fancy lugging our bags across London at that time in the morning! The flight then left on time and it was all going very smoothly until we came into land when the high winds and heavy rain caused a bit of a hair-raising landing!

We got the airport bus to the hotel and then once we had checked-in we went next door to the tennis centre to get a feel for the place and book some practice for later in the day but all the referee could offer was half an hour at 7.30pm!

It was then time to get some lunch at the local supermarket and relax for a few hours at the hotel before going back to the tennis centre at 4pm.

I’ve got a feeling that the practice situation at the club is going to be very tight this week as there’s not only a Tennis Europe and ITF event taking place but also a Norwegian National event later in the week! However, after getting to know the referee a little he managed to get us on a court this afternoon between matches from 5-6pm which gave Toby a great opportunity to get used to the courts. I started training with him and then after 10 minutes he was joined by 3 Swedish boys and they all had a good session together. Toby hit for around 20 minutes from the back of the court to get a good feel for the speed (which was actually pretty quick, especially off the lines!) and then he went through his normal routine of warming up his volleys, smashes and serves. All four players then mixed in and played some full-court points for the last 15 minutes to round off a very good training session.

Once we were finished we headed back to the hotel and even though it’s only about a 1 minute walk away we needed to make sure we wrapped up warm before leaving as the wind out here is really biting!

We then showered and changed before heading back out for the 10-15 minute walk down the road to the shopping centre where we found our perfect restaurant for the week – ‘PastaPasta’!

Whilst we were at dinner the draw came out:

When then headed back to the hotel via an unintentional detour (basically got a bit lost!) and had an early night ready for Toby’s first match tomorrow.

Schedule for tomorrow:

Toby Huffer (GBR) (1585) vs (Q) Gustaf Navarp (SWE) (2171) – 2nd match after 9am