Tuesday 12th April 2016
Even though tennis is an individual sport so much of what happens on the match court can be out of your control; the time of your scheduled match, the conditions during the match, rain delays (being British we get quite used to that!), line calls etc. But often the toughest aspect to deal with is the level of your opponent during the match . . . and that was Toby’s biggest challenge today!
Toby’s match was scheduled for ‘not before 1pm’ today so while he had a bit of a lie-in I was up and off for a run to the tennis centre at 7.30am this morning. I decided to go over early to try and book a practice court in the bubble but on my way over it started to rain and by the time I arrived the courts were soaked. I had a quick chat with the referee who said they would be using all of the indoor courts in the bubble at 9am for the Tennis Europe matches so there wouldn’t be any available for practice. With that I ran back to the hotel to let Toby know the situation and to get some breakfast.
When we arrived back on site at 10.30am the rain had stopped so we decided to warm up in the gym and then go straight on to the outside courts to get a hit in before the matches started. We practiced from 11am until around 11.40am and even-though the courts were still quite wet it was still a very worthwhile practice.
Due to a delay in the first matches getting started and then a very long second match we ended up having over 5 hours between when we finished practising and when Toby went on for his match. However, that gave us a chance to have a good lunch and then go through all of Toby’s match preparation work.
At 5.15pm Toby went on court to face 6th seed Ryan Nijboer from Holland. We knew nothing about Ryan but after the warm up it was obvious that he was a good player with a big serve!
The match started with an unbelievable point that lasted over 30 shots (which Toby won!) and despite the first game being very close, Ryan held serve to take a 1-0 lead. Each game in the first set was relatively tight but each time the score got to 30-30 it was Ryan that was able to raise his level just a little more to close out the games. Ryan took the first set 6-0 in 23 minutes but I wasn’t disappointed at all in Toby’s performance and he kept fighting all the way through.
Ryan continue to dominate the scoreboard in the second set but Toby did have chances to break serve on two occasions and held his own serve well in the second game of the set. Unfortunately Ryan was just too good on the day and ended up winning the match 6-0, 6-1 – if he sustains that level for the rest of the tournament I think he could be a real contender for the title.
Straight after the match I spoke with Toby about the positives from the two sets and, even though we were both disappointed with the result, we knew that Toby had fought hard, produced some very good tennis and, most importantly, maintained a good attitude throughout.
Once Toby had cooled down, showered and changed we left the centre and headed back to the hotel. We then went out for dinner at Prezzo tonight which I think has become Toby’s new favourite restaurant after they had Italian humus as a starter and Chicken and Nduja pasta as a main course!
Tomorrow we will head back down to Kent to prepare for the second ITF next week.
