South Africa U18 ITF Grade 2 (week 1), Day 8

Friday 7^th March 2014

Today was supposed to be our rest day and we had planned to spend most of the time at a lion farm but due to a mix-up with the tour company and the tournament, the tour only lasted about 2 hours!

Due to the tour leaving the hotel at 9.15am we had to be up reasonably early (much to Ben’s disappointment!) at 8am to get over to the restaurant for breakfast and then back in time to leave. The journey to the lion farm was only about 30 minutes and at the time we thought that was a bit quick as the itinerary had said over an hour.

When we arrived we met one of the owners on the family run farm and he started off by handing each of us one of the 8 week old cubs to hold. He then showed us around the site and fed some of the older cubs some chickens that had been donated from other local farms. The guide told us that the adult lions will either eat one chicken per day or if they have a dead cow or horse donated then that will last them around a week!

 

Next we saw the two cheetahs that they had and we were very impressed at how fast the female sprinted off with her chicken while the male tried to catch her! Lastly we were taken across one of the pens to where the male lions were kept and again were treated to watching them devour their food for the day.

Once we got back to the entrance we thought that we had more things planned for the day but our driver said that was it and that he would now take us back to the hotel . . . at 10.45am!! It later turned out that the tour that was advertised was to another farm that was much further away so now we’re waiting for most of our money back!

Ben and I decided to have lunch at 12.30pm and then as his arm was feeling much better we would have a light hit in the afternoon. Well, as it turned out our session at 3pm lasted all the way through until just after 5.30pm! Ben’s arm was feeling good and so we just kept working on his goals until he felt as though he was happy with all parts of his game. We worked a lot on keeping his arm loose on his groundstrokes as well as finding a better balance of pace and spin on his second serve before going into a lot of points with only second serves. We then finished off with some work on attacking short forehands to end a really good afternoon’s training.

After a reasonably quick turnaround at the hotel, Ben, Jazz and I headed to the restaurant for a well deserve dinner of curried chicken pasta – sounds a bit strange but it was actually pretty good.

After a hard week of training and competing we visited the local gelato shop after dinner where Ben and Jazz had a well-deserved scoop of ice cream . . . or 3!

That brings our first week here in Potchefstroom to an end and now our attention firmly shifts to the next two days of preparation before the main draw of the 2^nd week starts on Monday.