St. Vincent U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 2

Sunday 18^th August 2013

It was a good final day of preparation today as we managed to get two good practices in between very heavy downpours.

It was an early start for me this morning as jet lag once again kicked in and I was wide awake at 4.30am! After breakfast Stefan, Alex and I headed to the courts at just after 8am to try and get on court from 9-10am before all of the other main draw players turned up. It had rained overnight and so while Alex and Stefan warmed up I swept the puddles off the court but just as the boys started to hit at 9am the rain came hammering down again! In the rain break Alex went through his pre-hab programme and then just before 10am we managed to get back on court for a very good 1 hour session.

It was then back to the hotel to relax, get some lunch and watch some of the Chelsea vs Hull game. After Alex and Stefan moved rooms so they could share, we headed to the supermarket on one of the local buses to stock up on water and supplies before going straight to the club for the second session of the day.

We were joined by Victor Gurevich from America from 3-4pm and, as it was the last session before everyone would play their main draw match tomorrow, we decided to make it all point based. The boys all worked well together and it was good variation to have 3 players on the court even if it did mean that they weren’t on court for every point.

By the end of the session Alex was happy with his level and felt well prepared for tomorrow so he went and signed in and then, just as the rain started to pour down again, we went back to the hotel.

We had dinner tonight at the hotel and were joined by Mia Smith who had just arrived after a horrendous 36 hours of travelling from St. Lucia – Liat Airlines is definitely not the player’s favourite on this trip!! It was great to catch up with Mia having not seen her for a couple of months and after narrowly losing in the final of the doubles last week she’s hoping to go one better this week.

The draw came out while we were at dinner and here it is!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Elliott Thornton (USA) (2094) vs Alex Hagon (GBR) (1861) – 2nd match after 9am