Tuesday 12th July 2011 – My Birthday!!
Even though it’s my birthday today there was no lie in (or breakfast in bed!) and I was up and out running at 6am. I’ve been following a training programme on Adidas micoach to prepare myself for my 10th Great North Run in September (watch this space to sponsor me and support Make-A-Wish Foundation) and today was some tough red intervals for 48 minutes! After that we had breakfast at 7am and then headed over to the club at 7.45am.
We completed our normal warm up on and off the court and by 9am we were ready to go. Mia was 3rd on today taking on 15th seed Anna Popescu from England and after the groundsman managed to flood the court while watering it we had a short delay but finally got on court around 12.30pm.
Mia started the match very well, she was aggressive on every ball and achieving most of the goals we set within the first few games. After a being broken early Mia maintained her professionalism to break straight back and then broke again to take a 4-2 lead. Anna then upped her performance and used her experience to really test Mia in every game; she broke back, held and then broke again to serve for the set at 5-4. In the past this is where Mia would get frustrated but she kept focused and won the next 3 games to take the opening set 7-5.
Anna fought hard at the start of the second set and that, combined with Mia slightly losing her way, resulted in Anna taking a 3-2 lead with a break of serve. Mia never recovered that break and was broken again at 2-4 which left Anna serving for the second set. Mia’s unforced errors had been starting to climb during the second set and 4 in the last game gifted Anna the second set 6-2.
After going 2-0 down in the third (losing 5 games in-a-row) Mia cut out some of the errors and kept being aggressive to take the next 3 games to lead 3-2. From there it went with serve until 4-4 when, from 40-15 up serving, Mia hit 4 unforced errors and gave the game to Anna who then served out the match 5-7, 6-2, 6-4 in just over 3 hours. It was a really tough result to take especially as Mia didn’t convert her chances in the third set – out of the 10 games she played she had game points in 8 of them!! It was still a great learning experience for Mia and it won’t be long before she’s coming through these type of matches with the win.
After the match we had a de-brief and, once Mia had cooled down, stretched and showered we left site to drive into Birmingham where we are staying tonight.
Mia’s incentive this week was that if she qualified and won a round in the main draw we would go to dinner at Wagamama’s. She didn’t quite do that (the walkover doesn’t count!) but as she played well and improved in so many areas, plus the fact it was my birthday, we decided to go anyway so here was my birthday meal:
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- Starter
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- and Main!
Schedule for tomorrow:
Alexandra Herd (GBR) & Chloe Lant (GBR) vs Mia Smith (GBR) & Klara Radovcic (CRO) – 6th match on after 9.30am
