Queenswood U18 ITF Grade 4, Day 1

Saturday 11^th July 2015

After being eliminated from the doubles at the Edinburgh ITF on Tuesday we didn’t have long before the next event was due to start in Queenswood which is just north of London.

The beauty of playing tennis is that there’s always a chance to improve when you play your next event and as there’s a tournament every week of the year you don’t’ have to wait too long to do it. In other sports you might have to wait weeks or months, or in terms of the Olympics it could be every 4 years, but with tennis you can put the disappointment of one tournament behind you pretty quickly.

I met Toby this morning and we made our way to Queenswood School for 9.30am so that we could get two good sessions in on the clay before he plays his 1^st round Qualifying match tomorrow. The U14 Tennis Europe event started yesterday so 8 out of the 12 courts were being used for that but 4 were reserved just for practice. After warming up we got on court at 10.15am and despite having to move courts a couple of times we managed to train for an hour and 45 minutes. During the session we talked a lot about the matches last week and based all of our drills on areas that Toby really wanted to sharpen up before his first match. By 12pm we were both pretty tired so we headed into the pavilion to get a good lunch from “Racquets” café and then chilled out until our second practice of the day at 2.30pm.

As I’ve said many times before, I believe that it’s the player that should control exactly what they do on and off the court the day before a tournament starts so that they feel 100% comfortable and confident going into the match. With that in mind Toby set up the afternoon session and constructed a really good hour and a half of drilling, conditioned points and then finished with a few service games each. We both pushed each other in everything that we did and that led to some very competitive point play which is exactly what he’s going to get tomorrow.

At 4pm Toby signed in for Qualifying and after cooling down, showering and changing we headed 15 minutes down the road to our hotel for the week. Despite only being just over an hour away from home we decided it would be best to stay locally this week so that 1) we don’t have to spend too long in the car each day and 2) so that we avoid the M25 traffic!!

Whilst at dinner this evening the draw came out:

Schedule for Sunday 12th July 2015:

Toby Huffer (GBR) (2087) vs (8) Miguel Romanello (ITA) (1956) – 1st match at 9.30am