Tuesday 12th April 2011
It was a long cold day in Nottingham today and two tough singles matches made things even more difficult.
The day started with an early practise for Claudia who was taking on Bolton’s Sabrina Federici. We had a good warm up and talked about some match goals before she took to the court at 9am. The match started well with Claudia breaking Sabrina in the first game and despite giving up the break straight away she broke again to lead 2-1. Sabrina then upped her game and found a better depth and penetration than Claudia could and because of that she won the next 10 games in a row going from 2-1 down to 6-2, 5-0 up. Claudia kept fighting even though she was down and at 5-0 she produced the kind of tennis you’d expect from someone ranked 400 in the world. She held at 5-0 then saved 9 match points in the next two games and it seemed as though she’d figured out exactly what she needed to do to come back. Unfortunately at 3-5 she played a poor first 3 points of the game and couldn’t come back again from 40-0 down so ended up going down 6-2, 6-3. A disappointing match for Claudia, there were lots of positives to take from it, she did perform better than last week and Sabrina did play a very solid match.
As soon as Claudia had finished I went straight indoors to be on court with Dave Hodgetts to get him ready for his first round match with Jack Findel-Hawkins. Dave was seeded 16 but Jack has been playing domestically very well this year and was coming into the match full of confidence. Dave was broken in the first game and struggled until 3-4 to really make any in-roads on Jack’s serve. Dave couldn’t get the break but was getting closer at 3-4 and at 4-5 but lost the first set 6-4. The second was similar to the first with Dave getting broken in the first game but he was then broken again at 3-1 and didn’t get the break back until he was 5-2 down. He then played a great two games to keep himself in the match but Jack played a solid game at 5-4 to take the match 6-4, 6-4.
After lunch I went back on court with Claudia and worked on the specifics from her match for an hour and then I met up with Dave to go through his match. It’s always good to review matches as soon as possible and then try to either get on court to work on tactical / technical areas or set some goals for the rest of the week so the players can measure their improvement.
It was then back to the hotel to get changed before we went out to meet up with Naomi and the Bromley Team and the Portuguese Team for Dinner at Bella Italia (with a nice 40% off voucher!!). Unfortunately after that the day got considerably worse as Chelsea lost to Man United in the Champions League!
Schedule for tomorrow:
Dave Hodgetts (GBR) & Oliver Plaskett (GBR) vs (6) Toby Martin & Toby Mitchell (GBR) – 4th round after 9am, N.B. 12.30pm
