Salzburg U18 ITF Grade 4, Day 3

Sunday 13^th January 2013

It was another tough day at the office for the team today as Holly Horsfall came up against a very good German girl in her first round qualifying match.

As Holly was scheduled for first match at 8.30am it meant that we had to have breakfast at 6.30am and then leave for the club 15 minutes later with Michael and one of the girl’s from the Piding Tennis Academy. When we arrived at the club all of the players went straight into their physical warm ups and then at 7.30am we went on court where the two Holly’s hit together and Alex warmed up with Michael’s player. By 8am Holly had completed her pre-match hit and was happy with the level she had found so we went off to the player’s lounge to put the finishing touches to her preparation.

We didn’t know anything about Holly’s opponent but from the start of the warm up we knew that it was going to be a tough match. Paula Goetz is from Germany and is currently unranked but she started the match as if she was a top 200 player; she broke Holly in the first game and raced to a 3-0 lead hitting 8 winners in the process without making a single unforced error! Holly managed to then get a break back and was getting closer to her opponent during the games but the German always played the bigger points better than Holly which resulted in her winning the next three games to take the set 6-1.

Holly’s attitude remained positive and she played a great opening game of the second set but just couldn’t convert on one of her four break points she had against Paula’s serve. As the second set went on the rallies began to develop more and Holly did start to find a way to break down her opponent but a few too many unforced errors resulted in her going 0-4 down. Holly was still playing positively and looked very good coming forwards to the net but any shot that was slightly within her opponents comfort zone resulted in Holly being put under a lot of pressure.  At 0-4* Holly stepped up her game again and played a very positive break point to get a game on the board but unfortunately still couldn’t hold serve and eventually went down 6-1, 6-1. It was a very tough match and Paula Goetz is definitely the best players we have seen here so far; she hit 18 winners in the second set to Holly’s 9 and hardly ever gave up any points cheaply. Despite being disappointed with the loss Holly knows that the experience of playing this match will definitely help her to develop her game and she is now looking forward to hopefully getting into the doubles on Tuesday.

After having some lunch and relaxing for an hour, Alex and I went over to the squash courts to go through his Strength and Conditioning programme which involved making the best use of everything we had as there was not a gym available! We were using the back wall of the squash court for eccentric pull-ups, rackets for deadlifts / overhead squats, my medicine ball for bench press and (very painfully!) a tennis ball as a foam roller!! From there it was then on court with Holly Hutchinson and two other girls for an hour to get her ready for her main draw match on Tuesday, an hour on court with Alex to keep developing the things we’d talked about yesterday and one final 30 minute session for Holly Horsfall to reiterate the positive parts of her game from her singles match earlier in the day. After all of that we all met back up to cool down and stretch out before returning to the hotel with Michael. The players then had some time to complete some of their school work before we went out to dinner at 6pm.

It’s often difficult when you’re on the road and results don’t go the way that you would like so it’s very important for the players and coach to separate the hard training and matches with fun and entertainment once the day is over. That’s why I always like to have some banter with the team in the evenings and tonight was no exception. I must admit that I’m not a fan of losing at anything especially when it means that I’ve got to sit at the dinner table with a snowball on my head but seeing Holly Horsfall crawling around the restaurant on her hands and knees, Holly Hutchinson doing Burpees and Alex skipping around the restaurant with a tulip in his mouth delivering the bill to the waiter did all help to raise everyone’s spirits!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Doubles sign-in for Alex and then a possible 1^st round match