Wednesday 2nd April 2014
It was another good day here in California as Katie stormed through to the Last 16 in the USTA International Spring Championships.
I think I’ve finally (after 5 days) got over my jet lag and this morning, for the first time, it was my alarm that woke me up at 6.30am rather than my body! After finalising the preparations for Katie’s match today, I met her downstairs for breakfast at 8am where she decided to go for the hotel’s buffet breakfast while I tucked into the tournament breakfast box.
Once we arrived at the tournament site we found out that some overnight rain had delayed the start of play but we still decided to warm up at 9.30am before getting on court at 10am for our pre-match hit. Katie’s level in the session this morning was probably the best I’ve seen her hit the ball all week; she was very focussed and the intent she had on each ball was excellent – I had to work very hard just to keep up with her!!
After the session we went to the main stadium to shower and change and I was able to sneak out onto the main football pitch to get a quick picture of the LA Galaxy home ground:
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Pitch side at the home of the LA Galaxy
After lunch we watched some of the other 2nd round matches before it was time to prepare Katie for her match. We discussed the tactics for the match based on how we had seen her opponent play on Monday but a big factor that we needed to take into consideration was the strong wind that was blowing across the whole site. Katie then went through her physical warm up and, after a few movement drills to get her sharp, it was time to play!
At 3pm Katie went on court 6 to face Elysse Graci from America and from the very first game it was obvious that Katie had adjusted to the windy conditions better than her opponent. Katie held serve well and then played some very solid tennis to win the next 5 games in a row to win the set 6-0 with the loss of just 3 points. In her previous match Elysse had played well in the wind but today she really struggled and it didn’t help her that Katie was ready to take on anything that dropped a little short.
Katie taking on her forehand during the 1st set
The second set was a closer affair even though the score line doesn’t show it. At *2-0 Katie’s serve was under pressure following 2 big forehand winners from Elysse but after Katie managed to hold serve she raised her level in the very next game to stay on top. By this stage Katie was 6-0, 4-0 up and even though Elysse continued to work hard, Katie closed out the next two games to take the win 6-0, 6-0 in just under 50 minutes.
Once Katie had finished we had a quick debrief and then it was straight down to the gym to cool down on the bike and then stretch out. By the time we had finished it was around 5.30pm so we decided to head straight back to the hotel to have a well-earned dinner at 6pm.
After dinner we sat down to go through the match in detail and also start our preparations for the next match tomorrow.
Schedule for tomorrow:
(11) Katie Swan (GBR) (109) vs (8) Kaitlyn McCarthy (USA) (83) – 2nd match after 9am (not before 10am)
