USA U18 ITF Grade B1, Day 3

Sunday 6^th April 2014

It was another very good day of practice today as we put the final touches to our preparations before main draw starts tomorrow.

As qualifying was still going on at the club we decided to head back over to The Vintage Club this morning to guarantee a practice court for our session. We arrived there at just before 9am and, after warming up, Katie went through a short 10 minute ladder footwork session to sharpen her up before we hit. Katie and I then had a very good hit for 30 minutes before we moved courts to hit with Carol Finke from 10 – 10.45am. Even though Carol lost in qualifying yesterday, she was really good to train with and it gave Katie a chance to drill and play some practice points against another girl.

After the session we headed back to the house for some lunch and to relax before going over to the tournament site at just before 2pm for our afternoon session. By the time we left the temperature had really started to rise and as we started to warm up on court was around 90°F (about 32°C).

From 3-4pm Katie had a really good session with Mia Horvit; both girls found a very high level from the back of the court and then transferred that level into points for the last 25 minutes of the session. It was an ideal session to have before the tournament starts tomorrow and gave us some more very valuable time on the slower match courts at the Tennis Garden.

Once we finished the session we went straight into the gym to cool down and stretch out and then we had a bit of time to check out the rest of the tournament site. As we walked around we didn’t realise just how big it was – there are a total of 29 courts with 2 of them being huge stadium courts and even though the centre was built in 2000 specifically for the BNP Paribas Open, it is also a members club. There was also a big art festival on site over the weekend; some of the work was absolutely amazing (in particular some photos by Ian Ely) and some things were a little strange!

By 5.30pm we left site and headed back to the house to relax before dinner. We then had a long evening of waiting for the draw to come out – in the end I headed back to the club only to find out that one of the qualifying matches was still going on at 8.15pm! Eventually the draw came out at around 9pm and here it is:

Schedule for tomorrow:

Alexandra Letzt (USA) (1126) vs (11) Katie Swan (GBR) (112) – Not before 1pm