USA U18 ITF Grade B1, Day 6

Wednesday 9^th April 2014

It was another good match for Katie and a great player’s party / coach’s reception today at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.

An early start saw us have breakfast at 6.45am this morning and then get to the club to warm up on court at 8am. Katie then hit with Olivia Hauger from 8.30am until matches started at 9am and once again Katie’s level was very good throughout. Even though it was just a match warm-up we still talked about the goals for the match during the session and in particular focussed on service placement to set up the point.

Once we were done we headed back to the house to relax for an hour and get some food before getting back on site for 10.30am. Katie’s match wasn’t scheduled until 11.30am so we had lots of time to talk through the pre-match sheet and go through a good warm–up before she went on court for the match.

After a bit of a delay Katie went on to face Karina Traxler at 12.15pm and, after a solid first game (which saw Katie break Karina), she really upped her level to match the quality of hitting that she found against Kaitlyn last week. Katie dictated almost every point in the first set and hit a total of 14 winners on her way to winning the set 6-0. Her serve was working very well and, even though her 1^st serve percentage wasn’t that high, when it did go in it didn’t often come back!

During the second set Katie continued to dominate the points and put into practice all of the work we had done over the past couple of weeks on patterns of play. Karina held serve in the first game of the set but that was to be the only game that she would win as Katie won the next 6 games in a row to take the match 6-0, 6-1 in just over an hour.

After a quick debrief Katie went into the gym to cool down and stretch out while I headed to stadium court 3 to watch her next round opponent. Just as I arrived at the court the girls were finishing the second set and, as they ended up splitting sets, I was able to watch the whole of the third set which saw 6^th seed Raquel Pedraza come through 6-3, 1-6, 6-1.

From 3pm until 3.30pm Katie and I were back on court for a light hit with Mia Horvitt and then it was time to go back to the house to get some food and get ready for the player’s party.

The evening was very well organised and had two objectives; 1) get the players together to have dinner and unwind after a tough day’s competition and 2) get the coaches together for the USTA coaches reception and award ceremony. It was only really open to USTA coaches but when I was in Carson last week I asked if I could join in and I’m very pleased that they let me! Firstly we all had dinner together and then Patrick McEnroe took to the microphone to talk about the tournament and also introduce some of the legendary award winners. Then, one by one Jerry Baskin, Nick Bollettieri, Robert Lansdorp and Jack Sharp were presented with a Team USA Coaching Legend Award. They then individually gave a 5 minute speech on their coaching philosophy and told some stories about their own coaching careers. Nick and Robert were absolutely brilliant and gave very motivating speeches and then, just as I thought the evening would finish, Patrick McEnroe got all four of them up to do a question and answer session with the audience:

I felt very privileged to attend the evening and afterwards had a good chat with Patrick and Nick. It would be great if other federations would do the same at some of their higher grade ITF events as it really does help the coaches to develop and learn from the very best.

The evening finished at 8pm and then Katie and I headed back to the house to relax and pack up as we must check out tomorrow.

Schedule for tomorrow:

(6) Raquel Pedraza (USA) (72) vs (11) Katie Swan (GBR) (112) – 1^st match at 9.30am