Sweden U18 ITF Grade 4 (week 2), Day 1

Friday 8th January 2016

After a good week of training in the UK, Toby Huffer and I were back on the road early this morning to catch our flight to Copenhagen before heading over to Malmo in Sweden.

We arrived at Gatwick at 6.45am but due to both the plane and the runway being frozen in Copenhagen this morning the plane was delayed by almost an hour. By the time we had boarded and were ready to take off both Toby and I were fast asleep so the 2 hour flight ended up going very quickly!

Once we arrived in Copenhagen we got the train across the Oresund Bridge which links Denmark and Sweden. The bridge is very impressive and not only is it almost 8km long but it also is a ‘double-decker’ bridge with a combined road and rail bridge on two different levels.

We arrived at our hotel in Malmo at 2.15pm and by 3pm we were off to the Fair Play Tennis Club which is about a 10 minute taxi ride away.

When we arrived we met the tournament director and the referee for the week but were told that there wouldn’t be any free practice courts available until 5pm. Each tournament has a requirement to provide practice courts on the day before the tournament starts but they can determine when they are available so, unless we wanted to pay for a court, we would have to wait until 5pm.

By the time it got to 4pm we were getting a little bored so we decided to warm up on one of the free courts and, as no-one came onto the court by the time we had finished, we managed to sneak in a very good 30 minute practice from 4.30-5pm. We then moved over to our scheduled court where we warmed up our serves and played points until we lost the court at 5.30pm. During our hour on court Toby worked very hard and showed a much higher level of hitting than he had this time last week so by the time we had finished we were both very pleased.

After showering and changing at the club we got a taxi back to the hotel and then once we had changed out of our tennis kit we walked down the road to a really nice Italian restaurant called ‘Epicuré’. The portion sizes were a little small but the unlimited bread certainly filled any gaps in our stomachs!

We then walked to the supermarket to stock up on water, fruit and a few snacks before heading back to the hotel which was when we found out the draw had been released.

The matches don’t start tomorrow until 2pm and, as there aren’t any practice courts available until 1pm, it looks like we might get a bit of a lie-in.

Schedule for tomorrow:

Stanimir Petrovic (SWE) (UNR) vs (5) Toby Huffer (GBR) (1064) – 1st match at 2pm