The Tennis Foundation’s National Programme Coach Stuart Wilkinson blogs from the Biel-Bienne Indoor Wheelchair Tennis tournament in Switzerland.
Hello from the Swiss equivalent of the National Tennis Centre!
I’m out here for the Biel-Bienne Indoor event, an ITF 3 Series tournament, with British players Marc McCarroll and Louise Hunt.
Yesterday we got off to a tough start as the breakfast bowls could only hold 26 cornflakes (we counted!) but we struggled through and I was relieved at lunch to see much bigger crockery!
In between being distracted by the food issues, world number 21 Louise got off to a great start in her first round match against Swiss player Parmila Grangier winning 6-3, 6-2.
And later in the day Marc (currently men’s world number 27) really showed his dominance winning his match 6-0, 6-1 against Frederic Decorvet.
We’re using this tournament to put into practice some of the key things we’ve been working on in training for the past five weeks so I was pleased to see such a confident performance from Marc.
It will be tougher now as he’s in the quarters up against Frenchman Yoann Quilliou later today while Louise faces Austria’s Henriett Koosz in the women’s quarter-finals.
Louise is fresh from winning Britain's first world ranking tournament of the season, in Preston, at the end of February so is hoping to continue her winning streak.
Last night we just chilled out in our rooms, debriefing and sorting out the schedule for today and which practice courts we needed. Marc chose to play Football Manager while I desperately tried to find some online episodes of Time Team that I could watch! I’m sad to say that it seems impossible to get them outside of GB but like all good coaches, I had a Plan B… It was series 2 of The Fringe!
Breakfast was same again this morning – which made it easy to fill in the players’ food diaries – and then it was straight out on court for some practice time before this afternoon’s matches.
We had time for a quick Skype session back to the Tennis Foundation office to keep them updated on progress out here and now I’m back on Twitter as I just signed up last night. I’m already getting a little bit addicted…
Before I’ve had time to send this update Marc has won his semi-final match! Another impressive performance saw him defeat Yoann Quilliou 6-0, 6-1. One down, one to go. Fingers crossed for Lou later today!
You can follow Stuart and the Tennis Foundation on Twitter @stutennis2012 and @tennisfndation.
Read more about our wheelchair tennis performance players
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