Wednesday 11th April 2012
It was just a training day today as we prepared for the doubles tomorrow but it was a great opportunity to learn from the other matches and a chance for Mia to watch her opponent compete against the top seed.
Many players treat a day without a match during a tournament as a “rest day” but in my opinion once you’re out of the singles the whole week just becomes a “training week” and so you should be looking to do as much work on and off the court as you would if you were back at your training base. Mia is now used to my expectations but it was 100% her decision to get up at 6.30am this morning and get on court to warm up by 7.30am.
Sam and Mia warming up early this morning
For the first 30 minutes of the session she warmed Sam up for his 2nd round match and then we went into the bubble and trained for another hour working on specifics from her 1st round match yesterday. In particular we worked on how individually she treats each shot to make sure she’s identifying which ball she can step up on, which ball to defend on and which ball just to stay in the rally and build the point. Mia’s work rate was superb throughout and it’s great to see such a positive response after a tough loss yesterday.
After the session we grabbed some food and then went straight back out to watch some of the matches. For the rest of the day Mia’s main focus was to learn from the older girls in the U18 ITF event but she also stuck to her training programme and completed her interval session and her core and band work that she’s got prescribed for this week.
The sun finally came through after one of the rain delays
It was then time for some lunch and a chance to watch the Ukrainian girl that beat Mia yesterday. Dayana gave the top seed a real scare before eventually losing a very tight match 6-4 in the third after a couple of rain delays. Mia watched almost the whole match and I think it gave her a much clearer understanding of what she needs to do to win matches at U14 level. Next week in the U18 ITF it will be a different story as by that age the girls will overpower a younger opponent who only relies on consistency but for this event consistency is the key to getting results – if you can find the balance between being consistent and stepping up and taking the ball on at the right time then you can be very successful from a young age.
We waited at the centre until Sam had finished his doubles match (unfortunately he went down 12-10 in the third set tie-break) and then just before we left we checked the Consolation draw for tomorrow. To my and Mia’s disappointment she was the only player who had signed in for the event so the event didn’t run. It seems as though players were only interested in playing if there were points on offer and didn’t view it as a chance for some good quality matches with other main draw players – maybe it’s a British mentality as I’ve rarely seen Consolation events cancelled in other countries due to a lack of entries.
After another good dinner at ASK it was back to the hotel to watch the latest episode of The Apprentice. During the programme we had an interesting conversation about how many tennis players / coaches this week might “get fired” based on their work rate and commitment but as I explained to Mia and Sam if we actually started to treat the development of tennis players as a business and made coaches and players more accountable maybe we would start to see more British players being successful at a senior level.
As Alan Sugar says “you can’t hide in this process” – how many coaches / players do you know that are stepping up and taking responsibility in the “task” of being “world class”??
Schedule for tomorrow:
Mia Smith (GBR) & Ellie-Rose Griffiths (GBR) vs (3) Serena Nash (GBR) & Eden Richardson (GBR) – 4th match after 9.30am
