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March 15, 2009

Ashley Getting Ready For 1st Tournament to Start in Italy

Hi Everyone!

Today was a solid day of practice. I warmed up 2 people for their matches late morning and had another practice late afternoon. I was able to find someone who wanted to play points which is what I was looking for. I always feel like it’s important to get as much point play in as possible before a tournament. Everyone out here can hit a good ball and hit up the middle or cross court all day long. But when you take it into point play it can be a whole different story. Plus I like to see how I’m moving and test out all of my shots in practice points before I step out onto the court for my match. I don’t like leaving things to chance. I want to make sure I cover all areas around my game so that I am totally prepared physically, mentally, and emotionally. We ended up playing 6 games and I had won 5 of them so that gave me a little extra confidence boost going into tomorrow.

The rest of my day was pretty uneventful…I had lunch at the University cafeteria, watched some of the qualifying matches and read my book. I’m reading Tony Dungy’s second and newest book called Uncommon. I loved his first one and I’m enjoying this one as well. Oh I did do one other thing today, I made the draw with the tournament director. I picked numbered chips that were turned upside down one by one and he goes down the draw filling in the empty spaces. Some players don’t really like drawing the numbers because they’re nervous and it’s kind of like determining your own fate. I don’t mind though, it is what it is. I ended up drawing a girl from Italy, I don’t have the draw in front of me so I don’t remember her name or which seed she was. I’ll have to get back to you about that tomorrow. I don’t play singles until Tuesday, but I do play doubles tomorrow. I’m playing with Marina Shamayko from Russia. I don’t know her at all, I was going down the list of players and saw that she had a pretty good doubles ranking so I just decided to ask her to play. We’ll see how it works out. We play against two Italian girls tomorrow 3rd up after 10am. I need to get going to bed now because I’m practicing early before the matches start. Fill you in more tomorrow. Wish us luck in the doubles! : ) Goodnight!

Posted by Jack Newman at March 15, 2009 5:00 PM