Saturday 9th July 2011
It was the start of the Qualifying today with Milo taking on Alastair Gray but due to the lack to entries in the girls draw Mia had a bye so she will not play until tomorrow.
It was an early start today; we were one of the first at the club as we warmed up at 7.30am before getting on court for our scheduled practise at 8am. As always the players dictated their pre-mach warm up and as Milo was very thorough with his warm up we were on court for around 45 minutes. Milo then had some time to get some food and complete his pre-match goal sheet before relaxing and waiting for the match before him to finish. We actually warmed up and prepared to go on when the match was in the middle of the 2nd set but then it went to a set all so he had to do it all over again before he played!
Eventually Milo got on and to begin with he was competing well; the boys exchanged breaks early in the first set but at 2-3 serving Milo began to get frustrated with his level and the match started to turn. From 2-3 Milo lost the next 5 games in a row, not due to his opponent upping his level but just because he wasn’t thinking clearly about what he needed to do during each point. This changed at 6-2, 2-0 down when Milo played a great game to keep the score close but Alastair responded well and took the next 3 games to lead 6-2, 5-1. Milo then dug deep, changed his thoughts from being angry to being calm and professional and the result was that he played his best tennis of the match to break, hold and break again to put the pressure back on Alastair to serve it out. Alastair did just that with a solid service game but it gave a positive end to the match for Milo who will hopefully realise that his best tennis is produced when he’s calm and thinking clearly.
After Milo’s match we got some lunch and once he completed his post match sheet we talked through the match together and discussed the areas in which he needs to focus on before his next event. We then planned to get on court later in the afternoon to put some of the areas we had talked about into practise but there weren’t any courts available at the club or at a local centre and the David Lloyd we used yesterday didn’t have anything until the evening.
As we were unable to train it gave Mia the perfect opportunity to watch her opponents play and start to work out a game plan to beat the winner. Milo left with his parents to go back to Kent at around 4pm and not long after the mini orange tournament finished so I was able to train with Mia for just over an hour working on her serve, drilling her groundstrokes and talking about tactics to take into her match tomorrow.
By the time we finished it was around 6pm so we showered and changed and went straight from the club to dinner in Solihull. After dinner we drove out to our accommodation for this evening which was at a B&B on a farm – quite a nice place with my room being a converted old barn – hopefully there won’t be any cockerels waking us up at 5am!!
Schedule for tomorrow:
Mia Smith (GBR) (UNR) vs Florence Abbott (GBR) (UNR) – 2nd round on after 9.30am
