On the 2nd of April Alex Bolt, Andrew Harris, Simon Rea and myself started on our long journey to Vercelli in Italy.
Our flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi had more turbulence than all of us were hoping and expecting! Finally, we arrived in Vercelli where the weather was very different comparing it to Australia’s. On went two jumpers, tracksuit pants and an Essendon Bombers guernsey!
We had a little time before the tournament started here but rain didn’t help us at all and limited our practices on court. Still, we did a lot of weights and ground out brisk runs to give us the best possible chance against our oppenents.
Alex Bolt and myself had a victory in the doubles, which was well fought and overall a very good start to the tour for both of us. After the doubles final Alex, Simon and myself had 30 minutes until our train was departing – it was the last train out of Vercelli to the next tournament and I was playing in the qualifying singles.
We were lucky enough to make it on time and arrived at our hotel at 12.30 am. We were all tired and wanting some quality ‘head on pillow’ time! Thankfully I was able to wake up feeling refreshed and ready to compete in the singles. It was raining so we had to change venues and play indoors.
I was pretty happy when I heard this news – the indoor courts were quicker, which suited my game. In the end, I got the victory 7-6 6-3 against a talented Italian who knew what he was doing on the clay.
In the last round of qualifying I went down to a quality player from Slovenia. On the day he was just to good for me. I sat down with Simon after the match and learnt a lot from the loss which is a big positive. Overall this experience has given me a lot to work on and to think about.
Andrew Harris, Andrew Whittington, Alex Bolt and their Coach, Simon Rea, were in Italy as part of a four-week Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) tour.
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