Podgorica U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 1

Monday 27^th May 2013

It was a good 1^st day at the Podgorica Open today as both Alex and Katty started their tournaments off with a win in the first round of qualifying and then we ended the day with a little climb up a mountain!

Everyone met for breakfast this morning at 7.30am and then we got two taxis over to the tournament site at 8.45am. The drive to the club is quite picturesque as you follow a valley in the mountains and when we arrived at the club the first thing we noticed was the amazing scenery. The players were quite impressed by the club, especially as it had a TV and Wi-Fi!!

Georgie and Holly Hutchinson decided that they wanted a day off from tennis today so they did some strength and conditioning work while Holly Horsfall, Katty, Alex and I warmed up. As Holly had a bye in the first round of qualifying she wasn’t able to practice this morning but Katty and Alex managed to share a court with two of the Turkish players for their pre-match warm-up.

We finished the session at 10am when the first round matches went on and then Katty and Alex completed their pre-match sheets in preparation for their singles matches. Once Holly and Georgie had finished their training we all met on the balcony for the players to write a review of last week and set their goals for the tournament this week. Everyone did it well (even if it did take them a while to get going!) and it’ll be interesting to see if they can reach their goals for this week.

At just after 12pm Katty went on to face Katsiaryna Skachkova from Belarus. The first couple of games were a bit edgy from both players but once Katty held serve to level the set at 1-1* she relaxed and started to produce  a good level of tennis. Katty has a very good physical intensity and works hard for each point which made life very difficult for her young opponent. Katty took a 5-1 lead but then her opponent raised her level and took the next two games before Katty closed out the set 6-3.

In the second set Katty was much more relaxed but her attitude was just as ruthless! She raced to a 5-0 lead with some very aggressive tennis from the back and the front of the court before finishing off her opponent 6-3, 6-1.

After the match we got some lunch and then at 2pm it was time for Holly Horsfall to get some time on the clay. She trained with me for the first 30 minutes of the session and then Elyse Lavender joined us for the last 30 minutes.

Following that session Alex took to the court at 3.15pm to take on Jovan Macic from Montenegro. The level from the start of the match was very high with both players competing hard from the back of the court but it was Alex that broke early and took control at *2-1. Alex was dictating play from the back of the court and he stuck to his goal of trying to keep each rally to 60/40 in his favour. Doing that, combined with some excellent moves forwards to the net to finish points, saw Alex go on to take the first set 6-1.

Alex continued to play the best tennis that I’d seen from him on a match court at the start of the second set and immediately took a 4-0 lead. With his dad barking instructions at him from the side of the court Jovan fought back from 5-1 down to 5-3 but Alex stayed strong and served it out to take the match 6-1, 6-3.

After two good performances the whole team were happy but Georgie, Holly Horsfall and Elyse didn’t want to end the day without trying to climb up the big hill opposite the club! It was probably my fault as I’d been saying all day how good the view must be from up there so I decided to go with them to give it a go. It was a pretty steep climb and after getting about ¼ of the way up I decided that was far enough for today . . . here’s the view we had:

After getting back to the hotel at around 6pm the players had an hour to shower, change and relax before we met for dinner at 7pm. We had a very intense game of cards over dinner which saw me just beat Alex in the final two so at some point this week he’s got to re-enact this classic “Night-time, daytime” to the whole restaurant!!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Alex Hagon (GBR) (1680) vs (8) Ognjen Sunjevaric (SRB) (1680) – 1^st match at 9am

Katty Weymouth (GBR) (UNR) vs Andjela Laban (MNE) (UNR) – 2^nd match after 9am (not before 10am)

(3) Holly Horsfall (GBR) (1904) vs Gorana Kadijevic (CR0) (UNR) – 3^rd match after 9am

Final qualifying rounds will follow after rest