South Africa U18 ITF Grade 2 (week 1), Day 3

Sunday 2^nd March 2014

Today was a very good final day of preparation which actually saw Ben train with his first round opponent tomorrow – at least we know a lot about him now!

After an early start yesterday, today was more relaxed and we headed over to breakfast on the last shuttle bus at about 8.30am. The breakfast was pretty similar to yesterday; the Rice Krispies were still a bit strange and the scrambled egg was very yellow but all in all it wasn’t bad!

While Ben warmed up at around 10am I decided to have a good stretch out to try and loosen up some tight quads and hamstrings from the run yesterday. We then headed onto court to train with David Poljak from Czech Republic and the introduction of some new balls had both players struggling from the start. Around 15 minutes into the session the boys found their range and the quality of the drilling remained high throughout the session. For the last 25 minutes the boys played a couple of match tie-breaks; Ben won the first one with some excellent serving and returning but David managed to take the second one despite it still being close.

As the tie-breaks were very serve dominated we decided to finish the session with some points off the ground which gave Ben more of a chance to get into a rhythm from the back of the court.

At 11.45am we headed over to the gym to cool down and have a stretch out and then soon after we walked to ‘Beef boys’ for lunch. Ben didn’t fancy the pork chops again after yesterday and I wasn’t too keen on the creamy pasta so we opted for one of the best meals we’ve had since we arrived which was just two grilled chicken breasts and a couple of baked potatoes  – happy days!

This afternoon Ben decided that he wanted to work on some specific areas of his game and as that’s not always possible when you are hitting with another player, I stepped up to train with him. We ended up being on court for just over an hour and by the time we finished the session with some points Ben was hitting very well – I’m still annoyed though that I didn’t close out our up to 11 when I was leading 5-1!!

Jasmine Asghar arrived this morning from London and after a short hit with another girl she came on court to hit with Ben for 20-25 minutes. It gave Ben a chance to hit a few more balls and also gave Jazz a bit more time on court to get used to the conditions before her first round tomorrow.

Once Ben had signed in and we’d both registered for our meals for the week we got a lift back to the hotel with Huibre and Louise Botes which did us a massive favour as otherwise we would have been waiting for ages for the shuttles to go backwards and forwards.

Dinner tonight was the first time that the restaurant had laid on a buffet and Ben, Jazz and I thought that the food was good. Others however, did not which meant that they made the shuttle driver stop at McDonald’s on the way back to the hotel – I won’t name names but I have no idea how players can eat that kind of food the day before their first round match!

 

Schedule for tomorrow:

Ben Stride (GBR) (247) vs (3) David Poljak (CZE) (93) – 4^th match after 8.30am

Doubles 1^st round not before 3pm (the draw will be released after the sign-in at 12pm tomorrow)