Thursday 30th May 2013
2 wins out of 4 today means that we have one player in the ¼ finals of the singles and one team in the semi-finals of the doubles.
After just 5 and a half hours sleep I was up at 6am this morning to get ready for a long day at the club. We knew that some rain had been forecast but we didn’t expect it to start as soon as we made our way over to the club at 7.45am.
While Holly Hutchinson, Georgie, Alex and I were warming up the rain was quite light but from 8.30-9am it brightened up which meant we could get a good practice session in before the matches started at 9am.
There were a couple of rain delays during the first round of matches but fellow Brit Lewis Roskilly did us a big favour by flying through his match 6-1, 6-0 as Georgie was next on that court.
After trying to start their match once but failing due to the rain, Georgie and Mia Jurasic from Croatia finally started at 11.15am and by the way Georgie began she wasn’t in the mood to hang around for the next spell of rain! She took a 3-1 lead with some solid tennis and then raised her level to extend the lead to 5-1. While Georgie was serving for the set at *5-2 the rain came down again but Mia didn’t want to leave the court as she was up *15-40 in that game. Georgie held her ground and the referee finally arrived to say it was too wet and suspended play.
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A very wet court 5 and court 6
We then had a break for exactly 2 hours which gave us plenty of time to get some lunch and talk through the set before they returned to the court at 2pm.
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Holly keeping us entertained during the rain delay after losing at cards!
Georgie was broken after having a set point on her serve and then Mia put more pressure on by holding her own serve in the next game. Georgie stayed strong though and served it out the second time of asking to take the set 6-4.
The second set scoreline was much more one sided but it wasn’t until 4-1 up when Georgie really relaxed and really started taking the ball on which lead to her taking the match 6-4, 6-1.
Once the other courts had dried out Holly was moved to court 1 at 4.30pm to face Andrada Surdeanu from Romania. Holly lost to Andrada last week in a poor match and was definitely prepared for her this week. The first 4 games all went against serve but Holly’s level of hitting from the back of the court was very good. She knew that she needed to be aggressive and take on short balls / drive volleys to take her opponents time away and she was doing it very effectively. Unfortunately Holly lost a little confidence at 2-2* which lead Andrada to hold twice and break twice to take the first set 6-2.
At a junior level most players think that if they lose a first set they need to completely change their tactics for the second set but a lot of the time they just need to be more effective with them and execute their shots better. Holly had played a good first set but her unforced error count hurt her too much (24 from Holly vs 5 from Andrada). Holly started the second set well but wasn’t moving forwards as much as in the first set which made life more comfortable for her opponent. Holly was broken again at *2-3 and despite having lots of points to break back in the 18 point next game she eventually went 2-5 down. Holly struggled again in her last service game, managing only 3 out of 8 first serves which lead to her being broken to lose the match 6-2, 6-2. It was definitely a better performance than last week in all areas and if Holly could have kept her belief up and kept playing the way that she did at the start of the match it could have been a different outcome.
After Holly’s match we had just one hour before Holly Horsfall and Elyse and Holly Hutchinson and Georgie went on for their doubles matches. They were put on courts behind each other so we sat between the two courts and tried to keep up with what was happening in both matches.
Georgie & Holly were taking on Agata Borgman & Sonia Grzywocz from Poland while Holly & Elyse had a tough draw against 4th seeds Tamara Kupkova from Slovakia & Cristiana Tudor from Romania.
Georgie and Holly played the best match that I’d seen from them on the trip and looked like a very sound doubles pair as they came through to win 6-1, 6-2 but unfortunately Holly and Elyse struggled against a strong pair and were never able to really get a firm hold on the match as they went down 6-2, 6-3.
We got back to the hotel around 9pm and then had a late dinner before everyone went off to bed to get as much sleep as possible before another early start tomorrow.
Schedule for tomorrow:
(4) Georgie Axon (GBR) vs (5) Cristiana Tudor (ROU) – 2nd match after 9am
(3) Georgie Axon (GBR) & Holly Hutchinson (GBR) vs (2) Milica Novakovic (SRB) & Ege Tomey (TUR) – After Rest
