Sri Lanka U18 ITF Grade 5 (week 1), Day 3

Saturday 4^th October 2014

It was a tough start to the first tournament for Toby and Nils here in Colombo as they both came up against good opponents in their first matches and played in difficult conditions.

As Toby was scheduled for a 9am match we were all up early and at breakfast for when it opened at 6.30am before heading over to the club at 7am. The original plan was to warm up from 7.30-8am and then go through our on-court session for 30 minutes but due to the overnight rain all of the clay courts were out of action. We waited until 8.30am before warming up and then managed to get on one of the hard courts for just over 30 minutes to loosen up before the matches. Toby and Nils were both hitting well and by the end of the session they were feeling confident going into their matches.

Between when we hit and when Toby went on court for his match we had a couple of hours so both players completed their pre-match sheets and set themselves goals that they would like to achieve in their matches. We then had an early lunch before Toby went on court at 11.45am to face Siddharth Anand from Indian.

Toby had a slow start to the match and lost his serve to Love in the first game but broke straight back to level the set at *1-1. From those first two games it was obvious that it was going to be a close match as both boys were hitting well from the back of the court and there was no obvious weakness in either of their games. At *3-3 Toby was broken for the 2^nd time and soon found himself 5-3 down after some strong attacking tennis from his opponent but Toby responded well and played some very smart tennis to hold and break to level the set at *5-5. Unfortunately, after taking the first point of the game, Toby double faulted twice and ended up losing four points in a row to get broken before Siddharth held serve to take the opening set 7-5.

The first set had been very close and it was a tough one to lose especially as it was very hot and humid on court. At the start of the 2^nd set Siddharth had a bit more of a spring in his step while Toby found it difficult to recover from losing the tight 1^st set and from the opening game I knew Toby was going to find it difficult to turn the match around. Toby ended up going down 6-0 in the 2^nd set but it was a lot closer than the score line suggests and Toby had many chances to get games on the board in a set that lasted 40 minutes.

As soon as Toby had finished Nils went straight on the same court to take on Adil Kalyanpur from India and at the start of the first set I thought I was watching Toby’s match again! Nils was broken in the first game and then broke straight back to level the score at *1-1 but straight away Adil upped his level to race to a 5-1 lead. Nils was playing some good tennis against a strong opponent but he just couldn’t find his best level consistently enough. Nils kept fighting though and played a good game to hold serve at *1-5 before Adil served out the 1^st set 6-2.

Even though the temperature had dropped slightly since Toby had finished it was still very humid on court so it was good to see Nils taking on some food at the end of the set and also changing his shirt for a fresh start to the 2^nd set. Nils came out for the start of the 2^nd set with a good intensity and even though he went 3-0 down he showed good fighting spirit to win the next two games to stay close to his opponent. The 2-3* game was crucial though and unfortunately Nils hit 4 unforced errors to give his opponent a 4-2 lead and also a bit of confidence. Adil then stepped up to play his best tennis of the match and take the next two games and the match 6-2, 6-2.

As soon as Nils had finished I asked both boys if they wanted to get back on court later in the afternoon to work on their games following their matches – Toby wanted to rest but Nils wanted to train as soon as possible so, after showering and getting some lunch, we warmed up again just after 3.30pm. It was a good opportunity to practice again on the match courts and Nils and I had a very good session for just over an hour. Our main focus was helping Nils to find a consistency at his higher level of hitting and after identifying that too many errors were coming from him missing long we set up some drills to address those types of mistakes. The drills seemed to work as one of our rallies saw Nils hit 53 shots in a row at a very high level!

After the session we went back to the hotel to change before heading out to the other Hilton hotel for dinner. I went there last year for dinner but we were surprised to see that even though it’s a more expensive hotel than where we are staying, the buffet dinner is actually cheaper! That meant that we all went for the buffet and all had a very good dinner for just over £12!

It’s back to training now tomorrow and then sign-in for the doubles is on Monday.