Salzburg U18 ITF Grade 4, Day 2

Saturday 12^th January 2013

As the qualifying event for the boy’s and the girl’s started a day apart only Alex competed today while both Holly’s continued their preparations for qualifying and main draw.

It was an early start for me and Alex this morning while the girls had an extra 10 minutes in bed with the excuse of “our alarms didn’t go off!” At 7.15am Michael picked us up and after an interesting drive in the snow we arrived at the club after 7.30am!

We went straight to the badminton courts to warm up before Holly Horsfall hit with Alex from 8-8.30am to prepare him for his match. While Holly and Alex were training Holly Hutchinson stayed on the badminton court and went through a 25 minute speed and movement session as she looks to balance her recovery from this week’s training at home with the right amount of hitting to prepare herself for main draw on Tuesday.

We then had a couple of hours to relax and then prepare for Alex’s match before he went on court at 10.30am against Serban Mucenic from Romania. The first four games of the match went with serve as both players were just finding their range; the Romanian hit well from the back of the court and had quite a strong first serve but Alex was comfortably matching him from the baseline and didn’t miss a first serve for the first two service games. Alex looked in control at 2-2* 40-15* but a poor shot selection on his first break point really distracted him and that lead to Serban holding, breaking and then holding again to take the first set 6-2.

Alex started the second set in a much more aggressive manner and even though this resulted in him going 0-4* down the quality of his tennis was much better, the only problem was that he was missing a little too early in the rally. However that changed when he managed to get his first break of the match and from *1-4 he looked much more positive and confident on the court which resulted in making the balls that earlier he was just missing. Alex held serve and continued to attack his opponent but the Romanian responded by upping his level too. The set was really in the balance at 3-5* but unfortunately Serban served big and hit three winners from the back of the court in that game to take the game and the match 6-2, 6-3. There were a lot of positives to take from the match especially how Alex increased his hitting level and aggressiveness at the start of the second set, if he can continued to develop that side of his game and keep pushing himself to dominate more points he will come through these type of matches with a win.

After Alex’s match we went straight to the badminton courts to cool down and stretch out before Alex showered, changed and then met me at the club restaurant for lunch. After lunch Alex completed his match analysis sheet and then we talked through the match in detail focusing firstly on the effectiveness of his hitting and then we talked about where he wants to be in a few years’ time and what he needs to do to get there. Alex was very mature and professional in his post-match analysis and he knows that it’s the experience of playing at this level that’s important rather than just the winning as long as he develops his whole game in the process.

As soon as we were finished I was back over to court 8 to work with the girls and, as they’d managed to book a full court to practise on, we were able to get a lot of points played to prepare Holly Horsfall for her first round match tomorrow. Both girls were hitting well, working hard and looked very comfortable on the slow carpet courts. As soon as we were finished we all went over to the squash courts to cool down and stretch out to end a good days training.

There was then just enough time to navigate our way in the snow to the local supermarket (while trying to avoid the snowballs that Holly Horsfall and Alex were trying to bombard me with!) before we returned to the club and Holly signed in for qualifying. Michael then picked us up and drove us back to the hotel where everyone had a bit of time to themselves before we headed out to dinner.

Tonight we ate at a local traditional Bavarian restaurant and the food was superb; I had the schnitzel that Michael had earlier recommended, Holly Horsfall prepared herself for tomorrow with an amazing looking Pasta while the other Holly and Alex both had a big Pork dish. On the way back I was once again subject to a snowball attack from Holly Horsfall and Alex but I did manage to get a few good hits in myself!!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Paula Goetz (GER) (UNR) vs Holly Horsfall (GBR) (UNR) – 1^st match at 8.30am

Winner to play Eva Nyikos (AUT) (UNR) – 5^th match after 8.30am