We Got A Green Light - January 20, 2010

Hello everyone once again from the home of the Oz Open!

I am very pleased to tell all of you that we finally got our 2010 Oz Open on the way this morning and it was with a win.

Shahar played another player she had lost to before but was able to turn the tables this time. The player we played against has a very powerful serve at times hitting over 195 km/h.

We knew that this serve would be big and so yesterday we spent some time training the returns. We used a few of the drill that anyone can find on the video library on ITUSAtennis.com.

This served Shahar very well and it proved to me yet again that the best form of defense is to be aggressive and lead the way by attacking your adversary all of the time. Even when you have serves coming at you as if they were bullets.

Usually breaking the serve of a big serve will mean beating them. They will rely on this weapon heavily and often neglect the other areas of their game, which will not hold up when they loose their serve and thus loose their momentum.

After the match we went to the gym where Shahar spent 10 minutes on the stationary bike and then I helped her stretch. She then went to shower and attended the press conference before having lunch. She is now at the hotel resting as I write this. Something that is very important for the players which is not too spend any more time than they need to at the tournament. This often drains you emotionally from all the hellos and conversations one has in an event of this nature. Not to mention making it very hard to keep your focus on the things are important and not who is going out with who, etc.

The tournament has already thrown a few surprises into the mix with a few top players going out earlier than expected. I think we are going to see many more upsets as the days go by and of course we are hoping that we can be responsible for several of those as we continue on our quest to make it to that magical second week of a Grand Slam.

We play again tomorrow as our match was cancelled on Tuesday so I hope to be able to report back with some more good news.

Have a profitable day!
Pablo