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Thursday, 07 May 2009 22:43 |
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 The other day I had to go out to eat by myself….I didn’t feel like doing room service so I took a walk and landed up at a Japanese restaurant offering a buffet. They had this little “boats-in-water system” which would carry dishes of sushi, noodles etc in a kind of circle with all the tables along side the boat “track”. I then made the mistake of sitting in a chair with my back to the direction from which the little boats were travelling from. Another tennis player had walked in and had sat one table away from me so I thought it might be rude to turn my back on him. The first catch was an easy one….the boats were going quite slowly and I had a few seconds to decide if I felt like salmon, which I did, and so I began to eat.
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Tuesday, 05 May 2009 07:14 |
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 Hey all
I have just arrived back in Leeds for a few days rest after a very successful 3 weeks. I was first in Turkey with Jimmy, Christina and Anna and what started off not looking so good turned into a great run of weeks for Christina and MCTA. The first week of Turkey I learnt so much, how to talk with the players I’m working with and how important it is for the tennis player to have a good positive team that really cares around them. I am a very big believer in who you associate with and who you decide to tell your problems to affects the minds of tennis players and there focus. If a player doesn’t have people who are positive, driven, and generally care about them as a tennis player and as a person then they have to be incredibly strong and unique individuals with 100% focus on there desire to break through and make it. Otherwise I believe you get lost in the herd and get more and more confused on what your original desire and focus is.
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Monday, 20 April 2009 16:27 |
There are worse places to be than Monte Carlo (or Aunty Carlo as my two-year-old daughter calls it). We stayed at the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel and my room was on the 8th floor and had a rather nice view over the Monte Carlo beachfront and sea. Not a bad place to contemplate life.
If your life’s worth contemplating then you can admire the scenery and if it’s not….well you’re on the 8th floor and you could probably end it pretty quick…so….either way the 8th floor looking over Monte Carlo Bay is a good place to be.
It was my first tournament with a new partner, Sweden’s Simon Aspelin. I quite enjoyed it although I felt it ended a little too quickly – the second round. We played a really good first round to beat another couple of Swedes Robert Lindstedt and Robin Soderling 6-2, 6-4 but somehow one or two points went against us next time out against seventh seeds Andy Ram and Julian Knowle and we came up a little short 7-6, 6-2.
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Wednesday, 08 April 2009 06:21 |
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 A lot of players seem to look forward to Miami. Admittedly I haven’t always enjoyed it that much. It’s always a little chaotic in the city and the roads seem quite treacherous!
Five lane highways with no system in place for “fast lanes” or “slow lanes” – the cars weave in and out often without indication and I find I have to keep my hand on the hooter (or “horn”) all the time. I did find a nice apartment to rent for the tournament next year so that will ease the chaos a little! Besides that my Spanish is not very good and it seems that to get by in Miami it is becoming more and more important to speak Spanish otherwise 50% of South Florida won’t understand you! Speaking of apartments and someone that owns one in Miami – Andy Murray – well he certainly seemed to feel at home in Miami. He played some pretty impressive tennis throughout the week. It seems as if he is closing in fast to the top three players. Jeff (Coetzee) and I lost in the second round of the doubles to eventual champions, Max Mirnyi and Andy Ram. We had set points in the first set, won the second with two breaks and lost a close super-breaker. |
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Sunday, 05 April 2009 09:46 |
 Wow, after seven-and-a-half months out, I’m finally back! I spent a month doing physical training in the States and in the last week of that trip I started to hit tennis balls again. I arrived back in England around three weeks ago, hit for a week at home in Yorkshire with my MCTA stablemate Stefy Boffa and Jason Torpey and then travelled to Bath to play a $10,000 ITF.
I had agreed with my coach, Dave, that I would just play doubles in my first couple of tournaments back, to see how my foot would hold out. I entered doubles with Stefy, and we were actually highly seeded, which felt a little odd after being out for so long, and given that I only have four or five months worth of points on my ranking!
Anyway, we had a nice draw in the first round, a couple of young English girls who were unranked. Unfortunately, we didn’t start as well as we had hoped…we went 5-1 down in the first set! Good energy and positive attitudes from both of us allowed us to get into the match. From 5-1 down in the first, we only lost one more game, coming through 7-5 6-1. By the end of the match, we were actually playing pretty well and it felt brilliant to be back on the match court.
The next match was tough – we played Leonie Mekel (NED) and Hanne Skak Jensen (DEN). Stefy and I lost the first set, but fought hard to win the second and then really dominated the third set tiebreak, winning it purely because of our energy levels, 10-3. Our opponents were pretty flat so we just focused on being aggressive and going at them right to the end.
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Page 4 of 13 |
MCTA TEAMBATH TOURING AND CONSULTANCY TEAM