We are getting to the end of the first week at Road to Wimbledon supported by HSBC here in Kolkata with three more events to go at this 14 & under level before the Masters in April, which will consist of the top 16 boys and girls based on the circuit points.
Dan completed his clinic today at the Bengal Tennis Association HQ next to the football stadium which holds 120,000 people, yes bigger than Wembley!
Goal-setting and trying to get the juniors orientated to planning better and analysing what their achievements should be was the theme, plus a lot of good court drills and interaction with the coaches who hopefully have gained a lot of experience and ideas for the future having been with us over the last three days.
Back at South Club the singles semi-finals were played and the final of the boys' and girls' doubles. On both sides of the net in both doubles the players who are in the singles finals tomorrow were competing so from my point of view it was good to see how they will match up tomorrow.
As the grass is so fast the boys both have big serves and will be a strong match up. Shashank Theerthsam plays Vipal Mehta and neither will lose many serves. It will be close.
In the girls' final, Shivani Amineni, who is ranked No.3 in the 14 & under, will play Prinkle Singh who is No.2 and top seed. This could also be close.
However it is interesting, and I have no idea if it because of the grass, that there were so few three-set matches all week in either the boys or girls. I need to come to a better conclusion on that one.
After the finals Tim Henman will play some grass court tennis with the finalists as well as present the prizes along with the Bengal tennis Association President and officials.
After the short exhibition of how to play great grass court tennis Tim will do an extensive round of media promoting the Road to Wimbledon and HSBC and the relationship Wimbledon has with grass and the need to continue with grass at the major clubs. There is a keen media interest and we had nearly 40 media attending our press conference earlier in the week.
Certainly South Club Kolkata are rightly proud of their heritage of grass and have been great hosts to us all this week. I am sure if they agree we will continue with the Road to Wimbledon in 2016 at the Club.
