Sri Lanka U18 ITF Grade 5 (week 1), Day 1

Sunday 4th October 2015

After a busy summer at British tournaments and then a good 5 week training block at the start of September it’s been a while since my last international event but it’s always good to come out to Sri Lanka for my first event of the winter. This is the third time that I’ve travelled to these events and they always turn out to be very well organised tournaments even if the weather causes a few problems!

Toby Huffer and I left London on Wednesday evening and have spent the last 4 days working hard on and off the court and getting used to the heat and humidity. The clay courts have been looking in very good condition (despite being more like sand than clay!) until today when we had rain overnight then a heavy storm at lunchtime.

We got up at 6am this morning and after breakfast at 6.30am we headed to the club to warm up for our scheduled 8am practice court. Unfortunately when we arrived at the club all of the hard and clay courts were out of action due to rain overnight so we jumped back in a Tuk Tuk and went back to the hotel. The plan was then to train from 12-1pm and then again with Toby’s doubles partner from 3-4.30pm but just as we were having lunch a big storm hit Colombo.

That meant that the courts were completely out of action for the day so we decided to go back to the tennis centre to sign-in and then return to the hotel to go through a good gym session. Whenever I travel to tournaments I always try to find good deals on hotels to try and save the players and parents money but sometimes it’s worth paying a little more to have facilities like a gym, swimming pool and on-site tennis court so that we can train even if the weather is bad.

We had planned on having dinner at the hotel this evening but that changed when we realised the buffet wasn’t being served on a Sunday! It was then straight into a Tuk Tuk to head the short journey across the city to eat at TGIs where we had dinner while watching the Everton vs Liverpool game.

While we were at dinner the draw came out:

After dinner we headed to the supermarket to stock up on water and supplies for tomorrow’s match and then went back to the apartment to relax for the evening.

Schedule for tomorrow:

(5) Christian Cummings (IND) (1108) vs Toby Huffer (GBR) (2265) – 5th match on after 9am (not before 2.30pm)