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

Saturday 9th January 2016

It was a very good day for Toby today as he fought through a tough battle to get his first ITF win of the year here in Malmo.

As the matches didn’t start until 2pm today we had a bit of a lie-in and then met for breakfast at just before 9am. I then spent most of the morning looking up how to get to the tennis centre via public transport as the £12 each way taxi costs was far too much for a 10 minute journey! Once I worked out the best route I told Toby we would meet at 11.15am in the lobby and then head to the supermarket to get some lunch before getting the bus to the tennis centre.

The journey was very straight-forward and probably only took a few minutes longer than if we had taken a taxi – it was also a lot cheaper at SEK105 for both of us for a 24 hour ticket (3 journeys) compared to SEK150 for a single journey in a taxi!

We arrived at the tennis centre at 12.15am and went straight on court to go through our physical warm-ups. We then had a very good hit for 30 minutes to get Toby prepared for his match and even though we had to share the court with another player and her coach we still managed to do everything that we wanted to do in the session.

Before Toby went on court at 2pm we had a short pre-match talk which was based around Toby achieving his own goals rather than anything specific regarding his opponent as we hadn’t seen him play before.

When the match started Toby was broken in the opening game and after Stanimir Petrovic held serve to take a 0-2 lead things were not looking too promising! Toby responded well though and once he had found a more consistent hitting level he won the next 5 games in a row to take a 5-2 lead. Stanimir had some of the local crowd cheering him on and that helped him to mount a comeback which saw Toby get broken twice and soon go 5-6* down with Stanimir serving for the first set. Toby broke back immediately with one of his best games of the opening set but despite leading 5-3 in the tie-break he eventually lost it 9-7.

I expected Toby to come out fighting in the second set but didn’t realise it would take him to be 0-2* down again before he started the comeback! However, when he started fighting back he really meant it and won 6 out of the next 7 games to take the set 6-3. All it took was a few strong service games from Toby to really build his confidence up and after that there was no looking back.

I think the second set really knocked the wind out of Stanimir and even before they started the third set they had already been on court for over 2 hours! By the start of the third Toby was in no mood to give his opponent an inch and even though he double faulted on the first point of the set he managed to hold serve – only once they had changed the balls to new ones though – I’m sure he blames the double fault on the old balls!!

Toby flew through the third set 6-0 in 25 minutes and despite being annoyed at himself for not producing a higher level in the first set, he was pleased to get the win against a tricky opponent and move into the next round of Qualifying.

Once Toby had showered and changed we got the bus back to the hotel where we had a quick turnaround for dinner as we were both very hungry! We ate at ‘Epicuré’ again but tonight we changed up the meals from the ones we had last night and Toby went for the salmon pasta while I had a very nice veal and rice. Both portions were definitely enough and we left feeling quite full!

Before we headed back to the hotel we had a walk around Malmo and I have to say it looks like a brilliant little city with a lot of character. The Christmas lights are still up everywhere over here and there’s even a big tree in the square opposite our hotel that has presents hanging from the branches – I’ll take a picture and show you tomorrow!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Marko Vejnovic (SWE) (UNR) vs (5) Toby Huffer (GBR) (1064) – 1st match at 9am