Friday 13th April 2012
It was an unlucky Friday 13th today as Mia and Ellie came so close to a spot in the girl’s doubles final but just couldn’t convert their match points.
We were at the tennis centre by 8.30am this morning to warm up in the gym before Mia hit with Eden Richardson to prepare her for her singles semi-final against Cindy Castille. At 9.30am Ellie arrived so we moved over to Centre Court so that she could go through her normal pre-match warm up and also so that we could get a full court to do some specific doubles work. Yesterday the girls had played well as a team but they needed to move a lot more at the net to dominate the points from the start of the match so that was our main goal this morning. Both Mia and Ellie worked very hard for over an hour and their confidence in their movement and their tactics grew hugely as the session went on.
At 11am we went up to the café to have some lunch and relax before their doubles semi-final which was scheduled for 12pm. Unfortunately there had been a rain delay in the morning and then there was another one just after 12pm so the match didn’t end up going on court until after 2pm.
The girls were playing against the tricky pairing of Holly Thompson and Georgie Walker who Mia played against in the Wrexham U14 TE back in December last year. Mia and Ellie started very well; they were both dominating the net and holding serve comfortably which lead to them going 4-1 up in the first set. Holly Thompson, who had been serving well, then held serve for the second time before Mia and Ellie took the set 6-2. At this stage it looked as though it could easily be a 6-2, 6-1 kind of match but a lapse of focus at the start of the second set made life very difficult for Mia and Ellie. They quickly went 3-1 down before getting their heads straight and fighting back to lead 4-3 but some missed break point opportunities on Georgie’s serve and a wrong decision of who they chose to take the “sudden-death deuce” point ended up going on to cost them the set 6-4.
There was then a long delay while Holly and Georgie went for a toilet break but Mia and Ellie did the right thing of getting back out on court to hit some balls which kept themselves warm and kept their focus. When the match tie-break started Mia and Ellie took a 2-0 lead but Holly and Georgie responded well to take the next 3 points in a row. From then on it was very close; Mia double faulted at *4-4 but they came straight back to earn 2 match points at 9-7 before the tie-break was levelled again at 9-9. Mia and Ellie had another match point at 10-9 on Ellie’s serve but they didn’t convert and ended up losing 4 out of the next 5 points to lose the breaker 13-11.
It’s was a difficult loss and both of the girls were extremely disappointed not to have converted one of their 3 match points. Holly and Georgie went on to win the final later in the day but it was back down the M1 for Mia and I to rest over the weekend before returning on Sunday evening to prepare for the U18 ITF next week.
