Tunis U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 1

Monday 11^th February 2013

It was a manic 24 hours at home after arriving back from Kenya in the early hours of Saturday morning but by yesterday at 11am I was all packed again and at Gatwick airport to meet Mia Smith for this week’s event.

Yesterday was just a travelling day so it didn’t warrant its own Blog (!) but basically after being delayed for an hour we got underway at 2.30pm and arrived in Tunis just before 6pm local time. Originally I was going to book the airport transfer to the hotel through the tournament director but when I found out they wanted £45 for a 15 minute journey I decided we’d try our luck with a taxi from the airport . . . in the end it only cost us £9 – sometimes it pays to take a chance!!

Anyway back to today . . . we were woken early by the noisy traffic and police whistles outside our rooms at 7am and then we met for breakfast at 8.30am. There’s not a huge amount of choice for breakfast but they’ve got bread, eggs and juice which will do the job for us! After breakfast we headed out to the local supermarket to stock up on water before getting a taxi at just after 9.30am to the club. When I was planning the trip I read up on the local taxis and a lot of people were saying they’re always looking to rip you off but on both occasions today we made sure the driver used the meter and it cost us less than £1 for the 15 minute journey!

Once we were at the club we found out that the next available practice court was at 1pm – not ideal as we’d have to wait 3 hours but we did manage to find one court that they were not using for the tournament so after a good physical warm up we went on at just after 10am. The difference between the courts and the balls at high altitude in Nairobi to the conditions here was unbelievable but at least it meant the ball was a lot easier to control! We ended up losing the court after about 25 minutes as a match was going on but in that time I was very impressed by how Mia was striking the ball both in terms of how strong she looks behind the shot as well as how consistent she was.

After the session we spent a little while getting used to where everything was at the club and then we made our way down the road to a small French patisserie to get some lunch. Both Mia and I are not a fan of olives or very spicy food but it seemed like every sandwich they made in that place involved olives and a spicy sauce!

At 1pm we were back on court for the 2^nd session of the day where Mia trained with Sofia Sualehe from Portugal. Both girls trained well for the hour and after spending 40 minutes drilling and warming up all of their shots they finished the sessions with some points up to 11 which Sofia just managed to sneak 11-9. After the session Mia asked Sofia if she’d like to play doubles and we were both really happy when she said she could.

We then had almost an hour off before going back on court for our last session of the day to work on Mia’s serve. It had been quite erratic during the earlier session so we spent 45 minutes going through a few different aspects of her serve so that she could solve any problem that might arise during the match tomorrow.

By just after 4pm Mia had cooled down and stretched out so all that was left to do was sign in and then we were done for the day. Even though this event is only an ITF Grade 5 the way everything is run is superb; they have chair umpires for each qualifying and main draw match and there is bed & breakfast hospitality for main draw players and their coaches. I knew about the hospitality for the players but was surprised by them giving it for the coaches. When Mia signed in she was told that I needed an official letter from the federation in order to obtain the hospitality so I quickly emailed Leon Smith and Kirsty Thomson at the LTA who passed on the request to women’s team administrator Vicky Daniels and within an hour the letter had been sent through – great job guys and much appreciated.

When we arrived back at the hotel I went for a walk to find a bigger supermarket to get some supplies and then at 7pm we met for dinner at the hotel. After dinner Mia and I sat in the lobby of the hotel and watched “The Goonies” on my laptop – an all-time classic that Mia hadn’t seen before but I think she loved it!

Schedule for tomorrow:

Chiraz Bechri (TUN) (1774) vs (4) Mia Smith (GBR) (709) – 2^nd match after 2pm