Wednesday 18th April 2012
It was a complete washout at the Nottingham tennis centre today; the singles wasn’t affected as they all went indoors but for the doubles players it was a day of sitting and waiting.
We knew the weather forecast was bad for today when we looked at it over dinner last night so the girls decided so start early and guarantee a practice court indoors from 8-8.30am. It was a bit of a scrum down for courts as there were around 80 singles and doubles players trying to warm up and only space for 64! We did our full warm up on the court so that no-one took our place and then Mia and Gaby competed a solid 30 minute session – we couldn’t do any doubles specifics as there wasn’t time and as soon as 8.30am came there were another 32 players trying to get on court!
From then on it was basically a case of sitting around and waiting to see if the weather would clear up so that the doubles could go on the outdoor courts. The referee had said from the start of the day that he’d make a call on the doubles at 4pm so we took the opportunity to watch some of the other main draw matches and in particular it gave Mia a chance to watch her opponent play her next round match. It was an interesting match as Eden Silva struggled against Anna Popescu despite Anna being a year younger and also being unranked – Anna was playing for her first points though and is a tough competitor so we thought it might be interesting. After leading 7-6(7), 5-4 Anna lost the next three games in a row to level the match and with that Eden’s level increased in the third to take it quite comfortably 6-2. It just goes to show that it doesn’t matter if you’re unranked or 300 in the world, every match is winnable and it just comes down to how you and your opponent play on the day.
After the match we headed off site to get some lunch and to kill a couple of hours but when we returned it was still raining so Mia decided to get stuck into her gym programme. As Mia’s not competing next week she decided to increase her normal tournament training programme so that she has a smoother transition back into her training block once we get home. Today was Plyo’s again and Mia took over the gym with her ladder training:
At just after 4pm the referee cancelled the doubles for the day so we went back to the hotel and got ready for an early dinner at Prezzo. After that it was straight back to the hotel to sit down with the Bath team to watch Chelsea play Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final 1st leg and I was very pleased to see Chelsea scrape a 1-0 win – it might be a different story next week though!
Schedule for tomorrow:
Mia Smith (GBR) & Sofia Segerfors (SWE) vs Dominique Covington (GBR) & Laura Eales (GBR) – 3rd match after 9am (not before 12pm)
The winner to play (1) Lana Rush (GBR) & Eden Silva (GBR) – 5th match after 9am
