Thursday 7th April 2011
It was a big day today for Nicole and Anouska as they were playing for their first ITF points but they had a tough challenge against the number 1 seeds.
We started the day in the gym as normal for a 30 minute warm up and then went on court between 10am and 11.30am to work on specifics from the matches yesterday. The players all identified the areas they struggled with yesterday and we tried to resolve the issues that had come up in both matches. There was a lot of drilling on first volleys, committing to crossing and covering the court as a team rather than two singles players. The players often found it difficult and very challenging but as they started to grow in confidence they bought into the tactics more and more and all of them started to play very sharp doubles.
After the session we had some lunch and went over to court 7 to support Artur who had a tough task of taking on Josh Sapwell. It was the first time I’ve ever seen Josh play but obviously I’d heard a lot about him following his Orange Bowl win last year. I liked the way that Josh played and also liked the confident presence that he showed on the court, he looked a lot older than 15 but as with a lot of British teenage boys his attitude often fluctuated and often didn’t help him. I saw Bernard Tomic at his first two U18 ITFs at 13 years old where he qualified and won the first one in Christchurch and then got a Special Exempt and won the second event in Wellington and while his game might not have been as good as Josh’s today his attitude was much more professional. The first set was very tight today with each player breaking each other 3 times and eventually Artur took the tie-break 7-5. The second set continued at a high level, Artur got on top early taking a 5-1 lead but Josh showed he was prepared to fight breaking Artur when he was serving for the match and commenting “I’m not done yet”. Artur then broke back to take the match 7-6(5), 6-2. I thought it was very interesting how Josh’s response at the end of the first set could have summed up the problems with British tennis while Artur’s response on winning the match could sum up the fighting spirit that is shown across most of Europe (translation was required though and there was something about oranges in there somewhere!!).
Nicole and Anouska took to the court just before 2pm and despite going 2-0 down they were playing good doubles and were implementing the tactics we had been working on for the last 3 days. It wasn’t a surprise then when they held, broke and held again to lead 3-2. Unfortunately the momentum didn’t continue as they lost a couple of sudden death deuce games in a row and it wasn’t until 6-3, 5-0 down when they won their next game. Claudia and Mayya played solid together but Nicole and Anouska’s inexperience showed a little as they made too many unforced errors and didn’t test their opponents enough. They both worked hard though and continued to fight taking the next two games at 5-0 down but went down in the end 6-3, 6-2. It’s been a great week for both of them even though they didn’t pick up any points and hopefully they can take a lot of confidence from their matches into their next week.
After spending a long time working out how all three girls were going to get home we eventually got it sorted and were able to join Artur, Pedro and Bruno for dinner in Zizzi’s. Frankie and Nicole impressed the boys with their dance moves (!!) and Pedro finally worked out the numbers trick with the knives and forks!! Something that has been bugging him since Kenya!
I’m going to stay up tonight to support Artur tomorrow so this is my last Blog of the week but I’ll be back up here on Sunday for Week 2. Apologies for the lack of photo’s this week but my camera has been broken but I’ll make up for it next week!
