Thursday 14th February 2013
It wasn’t a very happy Valentine’s Day for us today as Mia had a disappointing 1st round loss in the singles and then Mia and Sofia got a walkover in the doubles – 4 days down and only 1 match played!!
We arrived at the club this morning at just after 8am and as soon as we started our physical warm up the rain started! It was only a light shower so we finished off the warm up and then waited in the player’s lounge until the courts were dry enough to train on. At around 9.30am Mia went on court with one of the Spanish boys to go through her pre-match warm up and despite the balls getting quite heavy Mia hit the ball very well from the back of the court and the issues that she had with her serve a couple of days ago seemed to have been solved.
After completing her pre-match sheet and going through her tactics for the match Mia went on court at 10.15am for her first round match against Chiraz Bechi from Tunisia. The match didn’t start well for Mia; she was *40-0 on her serve in the opening game before a series of unforced errors allowed her opponent to get back into the game. After losing her footing on break point Mia lost that game and then went on to trail 4-0 after a lot of inconsistent play from the back of the court. The Tunisia girl was quite solid but wasn’t really hurting Mia with a great deal and when Mia managed to hold serve in the next game and then get one of the breaks back I really thought that she would turn the set around. Unfortunately at *2-4 Mia’s serve let her down which led to her going 2-5* down but another break back kept her in the set. Mia struggled again with her serve at *3-5 and after 3 double faults in that game she lost the set 6-3.
This would normally have been a perfect time to take a toilet break and go and re-group as I got the feeling that Chiraz was starting to gain a lot of momentum. After holding serve in the first game Chiraz broke Mia to lead *2-0 and despite being 40-15 down in the next game she managed to hold to take a 3-0 lead. Mia held serve in the next game but by this stage the Tunisian’s confidence had grown considerable and she went on to win the next 3 games to take the match 6-3, 6-1.
The conditions in the match were difficult as it was cold and windy but Mia knows she should have done much better against a player who had very little to hurt her. It’s often the case at this level that players beat themselves with too many mistakes rather than an opponent beating them with a lot of winners and that was definitely the case today.
After the match we got some lunch and had a brief chat about the match before Mia showered and changed to get ready for their scheduled doubles. To our disappointment we then found out that Mia and Sofia had been given a walkover into the ¼ finals which meant they wouldn’t now play until tomorrow. With that news Mia decided she wanted to get back on court in the afternoon to work on her game so at 2pm we warmed up and then got on court for a very good session for an hour and a half. We spent the first 45 minutes drilling and then played a set where Mia played a lot better than this morning and showed good patience, discipline and consistency throughout.
Once we were done Mia cooled down and stretched out and then the highlight of our day happened!! We were driving back in the taxi when all of a sudden I noticed black smoke coming out of the bonnet of the car; I mentioned it to the driver in French to which he casually replied “Oui, Oui J’ai vu!” (yes, yes I have seen!). A moment later flames started coming out from under the bonnet so we quickly pulled over and when he opened the bonnet it was obvious something wasn’t quite right!! Mia and I both jumped straight out of the car and ran to the side of the road before a local policeman came over to help. Unfortunately my phone battery died before the flames really got going (!!) but you can make out the burn marks on the edge of the bonnet!
We were really surprised to see so many people stop and help the taxi driver put out the flames but we did laugh when one guy pulled over behind us, jumped out with two bottles of water but forgot to put his handbrake on and then his car rolled off the road an into a wall!!
We eventually managed to flag down another taxi and got back to the hotel safely but that does have to be placed high up on my “crazy taxi journey list” alongside when a brick got thrown through the windscreen of our taxi on the way back from the US Open!
Before dinner we went through the match in detail and then for the rest of the evening we relaxed and made sure everything was packed ready to check out tomorrow. Our flight is booked for tomorrow night but if Mia and Sofia win in the doubles then we’ll change it to a flight on Saturday.
Schedule for tomorrow:
Tereza Melicharkova (CZE) & Ana Dominguez (ESP) vs (3) Mia Smith (GBR) & Sofia Sualehe (POR) – 3rd match after 9am (not before 1pm)
