British Open 2019

I was the no seed no 5 in this tournament so that meant I had bye to the second round. I really wasn’t sure ie would be able to play as I sustained a deep cut to my right pinky a week before the British Open. Becuase of the cut I had, I did not have a practice or hit a ball until the day of match. The morning of the match I had gone to Queens Club early in the morning for a practice and to test my finger out. I struggled to hold the racquet properly and hit the ball without pain , especially on the backhand. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to play. I decided to try hit the ball with my right pinky pretty much off the racquet and found I could hit the ball to almost 80% of my ability and no real pain. So for the match I tapped my finger up with lots of extra padding which was in the form of medical & electrical tape. I knew I couldn’t serve a rail road in the match so I decided to serve short side walls and demi ok’ sand if I had to keep the serve right for defending a hazard I would serve a drag. To my amazement I played pretty well with all things considering. I was gripping the racquet with just my thumb and first 3 fingers. I was able to hit backhand by rolling over the ball with a slight bit of topspin. This win was huge for me as it now means John Lumley has to make the final to over take me in the world race points if I was to lose my next match. I beat Darren Long 6/3 6/0 6/2

Fortunately I have a day off before I play Chris Chapman at 4pm UK time

I wasn’t able to beat Chris Chapman last night. I lost 6/2 6/4 6/4. To be honest I really struggled gripping the racquet and trying to play the shots I needed to be able to execute. My finger wasn’t feeling great but I hung in there trying to make a game of it and I had chances to go 5/4 up in 3rd and 5/all but wasn’t to be. It’s disappointing I was not able to be anywhere near my best as I know my game matches up really well against Chris and would of been very confident in winning the match. I heave doubles QF today at 4 pm UK time.

That a side, I have now qualified for the 2020 world championship eliminators which is a huge personal achievement for me after 2 years of hard work.

Signing autographs for the kids on Junior day before the doubles SF was a lot of fun. Hopefully we can inspire a next generation to play this wonderful game.

Rob and I had a good win in the doubles SF yesterday against Bryn Sayers and Ben Taylor Matthews. We won 6/3 0/6 6/3 6/2. We played a pretty solid set to take the first set. In the second set we lost 6/0, but it was one of those sets where we kept on losing the important points. We had game points in most the games, but didn’t take them. Once we we went 5/0 down Rob told me to bin the set as I was receiving serve. This made sense as it wasn’t worth spending more energy trying to fight back in to the set and risk losing it when we could just start fresh with a new game plan in the 3rd. Rob decided to play back and I would play up. The points were tough, but our plan was to be solid and limit the mistakes. Make them try to do something special to beat us. One of things I can’t do at this British Open is force with any real pace because of the injury to my finger so this is forcing me to play more conservative and controlled tennis. This seemed to works as I would try ply the percentage shot and let Rob be the aggressor where normally both of us would try to be. We played two fairly solid sets even with the amazing Rob being a little off with his forcing. We won the next two sets to put us in our 3rd British Open final in a row.

We lost in the final 6/4 6/3 6/1. The first set was close and competitive but from there it was difficult to keep pressure on our opponents. Rob played well and my limitations were being found out by two very good players as my finger was really bothering me and unfortunately I have reopened my stitches and the cut is deep so won’t be play tennis for a while. With that being said, I have reached a huge goal of mine by making the 2020 World Championship eliminators and it’s now time to up the training & start believing that anything is possible as I plan to do the seemingly impossible by beating Camden in the eliminators, I just got to believe :)