Sri Lanka U18 ITF Grade 5 (week 1), Day 2

Friday 3^rd October 2014

It was a good final day of practice today and even though the weather forecast said it was going to rain all day, we managed to get two very good sessions in on the clay courts.

The boys had a lie-in this morning after a very long day yesterday and were up at 7.30am for breakfast. The breakfasts at the hotel are probably the best meal of the day and all three of us had a big meal to set us up for our first full training day.

After Toby negotiated the price with a Tuk Tuk driver we headed over to the club at 9am and then warmed up from 9.30-10am before getting straight on the back clay courts. As there was a lot of rain yesterday all of the clay courts were quite soft and damp but it was still much better preparation than training on the hard courts. Toby and Nils worked well for the whole of the session which lasted just over an hour and our main focus was consistency and point play. I joined in with the boys for a bit of variety and it was great to see both of them hitting at a higher level than yesterday even though it was still very humid today.

After cooling down and showering we ate lunch at the Italian restaurant that opened on the day that we left last year. The food was very good and it’s going to be great to have a decent place to eat when we’re at the tournament site for the next couple of weeks.

At 1.30pm all three of us went through our individual warm up routines again and then at 2pm we got onto the match courts for our 2^nd session of the day. The match courts were just as soft as the back courts but probably played a little better as they were a little more like clay rather than sand! We all hit for around 20 minutes to warm up groundstrokes, volleys, smashes and serves and then it was straight into match play for the rest of the session. Both Toby and Nils had specific aspects of their game that they were looking to sharpen up before tomorrow and by the time we finished at 3.45pm both boys felt good (maybe a little tired though!) and ready for their matches tomorrow.

Toby and Nils signed in for Qualifying at 4pm and then we headed back to the hotel to go through some recovery work. Toby and I hit the gym for 45 mins and then Toby completed a swimming pool recovery session while Nils stretched out in the apartment and then got on with some school work.

There was just the 3 of us for dinner this evening as Nils’ family have gone to the south of the island but Toby and Nils were kept entertained by Tom and Jerry on ‘The Cartoon Network’ which was on TV in the restaurant! After a good dinner we headed back up to the apartment to relax and get ready for the matches tomorrow.

Schedule for tomorrow:

Siddharth Anand (IND) (UNR) vs Toby Huffer (GBR) (UNR) – 1^st match at 9am

Adil Kalyanpur (IND) (UNR) vs Nils Larsson Regnstrom (SWE) (UNR) – 2^nd match after 9am

(WC) Thevan Perera (SRI) (UNR) vs Siddharth Anand (IND) (UNR) OR Toby Huffer (GBR) (UNR) – 3^rd match after 9am (not before 1pm)