Monday 31st March 2014
It was a very good start to Katie’s tournament today as she fought very tough conditions to win her 1st round match.
We started the day with breakfast at 7.30am and, following the problems with dinner last night, we managed to get a full buffet breakfast rather than just the normal ‘boxed’ breakfast due to the tournament supplying us with the wrong tickets!!
We then headed over to the site at 8.15am and started our physical warm-up on court at 9am. As always, it is the player that should dictate the pre-match tennis warm-up before their match so that they feel comfortable and ready to compete. That meant that my role this morning was mainly just a hitter but Katie and I did talk about specific tactics that we wanted to implement in the match as the session went on. Katie looked very good on the practice court and after about 35 minutes she felt ready to go.
As the two matches before Katie’s dragged on a little (the first match, which was finished in straight sets, took 2 and a half hours!) she didn’t end up going on until just before 12.45pm to face Jenna Friedel and by that time the wind had really started to pick up.
As I said yesterday, I’ve known Jenna since she played against Mia Smith and Georgie Axon in Guadeloupe last April but when she started the match it was obvious she’d improved a lot since then. The first two games went with serve as both girls played some very solid tennis but then it was Katie that raised her level first to hold well and take a 2-1 lead. Jenna responded straight away to level the set and then the next game ended up being the most important game of the set. Katie raised her game once again to start to produce the same level that we’d seen on the practice court over the last two days and, even though she was broken to love, it was only because she missed the final shot of the rally 4 times by a matter of centimetres. Because she knew that she was playing the right way she responded very professionally and that led her to break back in the next game, hold and then go 40-15 up on Jenna’s serve at 4-3*. Jenna fought back with some big hitting of her own to hold serve but the momentum was definitely with Katie who went on to hold serve to love and then break to love to take the first set 6-4 in an hour.
Katie’s ‘Good Year’ continues!
That set from Jenna was the best I had ever seen her play and as the second set began I got the feeling that while Katie’s confidence increased, Jenna’s dropped a little. The second set ended up being quite one sided and saw Katie win 5 games in a row from *1-1 to take the set 6-1. During that set Katie only lost 3 points on serve and one of those was a random miss-hit to double fault on match point!
It was a very good start to the tournament and both Katie and I were very pleased with the level she played at against a very tricky opponent in very windy conditions. After the match Katie went off to shower and change while I headed to court 10 on the other side of the site to watch Katie’s next round opponent.
Following that match we both headed to the gym so that Katie could have a good cool down and stretch out. By the time we had finished in the gym it was around 4pm and the doubles draw had been released:
Girl’s Doubles Draw
At 5.30pm Katie and I met in the lobby of the hotel to go through her match in detail and then at 6.15pm we headed to the hotel restaurant for a well-deserved dinner – thankfully the hotel was ready for us tonight!
After dinner Katie got stuck into some Algebra while I updated the website with new pictures and the doubles draw – check out the Facebook page and give it a ‘Like’ – only 6 more needed to hit 600! www.facebook.com/itctennis1.
Schedule for tomorrow:
(WC) Francesca Di Lorenzo (USA) & Caroline Dolehide (USA) vs (8) Chloe Ouellet-Pizer (USA) & Katie Swan (GBR) – 6th match after 8am (not before 3pm)
