Thursday morning, toast.

So yesterday's exertions having taken their toll on my body and specifically my ever fragile back. This morning I woke up with a shooting pain in my back only to realize the rest of my tennis playing wasn't going to happen.

The morning wasn't a waste however as I found the Qatar open streaming online so managed to watch Tsonga, Federer and Nadal play some awesome tennis.

I also spent the morning looking over my tournament schedule and with a little over 6 weeks remaining to the my first tournament, I'm already devising a rehab program to ensure this doesn't happen again. Being injured sucks!

Signing off from a sorry stay in Saddlebrook, until next time....

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

There wasn't a whole lot to be said for today's session if the truth be told. It was a case of rewind and repeat from yesterday's session. Lots of balls, multi-person drills and a very, very cold morning.

A summary of which is a follows:

The GOOD: Shawn McGee came over first thing in the morning and presented me with a signed ball from James Blake. He must have heard I was visiting and decided to send a ball my way as I was too busy practicing at the time to stop and chat.



The BAD: Our rehashed session from yesterday. After some of the amazing sessions we had last year and the expectations we had coming in to this years excursion, today's session was a real let down. We have had few real technical comments made of our strokes yet and while it's great to hit a lot of balls to get the groove on, we didn't need to fly all the way to Florida to achieve what we did today.

The Ugly: My strokes after 5 hours of hitting and some half hearted effort towards some of the drills. I hope tomorrow proves to be a little more productive. At least the weather was an improvement this afternoon.

Saddlebrook 2012

Our 2012 experience kicked off today with Mark Magone. A well seasoned southern chap who always has a story to tell.

The word for today is DRILLS. Drills, drills and more drills. It was a day filled with lots of balls and lots of hitting.

We started out hitting baseline drills, forehand to backhand down the line, forehand to forehand cross court. Then it was into volleys, one at net - two baseline, one sitting out. Then rotating clockwise until all had been at the net.

Next was points as double teams, then singles (max 3 points) before switching out with partner. Then we introduced serving to start the point, alternating singles players on each team with a max of 3 points again.

With the cold start (45degF) this morning we started a little late. 2.5hours in to the morning and we were done for lunch.

The afternoon session was another 2.5 hours of drills. No points this time, we were focusing on consistency. Typically playing 2 on 1 with the instructor feeding from the singles side, we had to get 20 balls in row. Miss a ball, the count returns to zero. We managed 48 with the first ball but struggled by our third rotation. It was a really good way to focus on your shots and play with margin.

So, after 5 hours of court time we went for a well deserved massage. We have another later start tomorrow at 9am so hopefully, the muscles would have recovered a little and we can move onto something a little more technical. Here's to day #2....