First Pro Tournament in Tel Aviv, Israel

I arrived in Tel Aviv and felt ready to go after an intense few weeks in Florida. It’s been great that my doubles partner, Jeremy Sonkin, is here with me along with one of my best friends and training partners on tour, Rayne from South Africa. We are all staying in an Air BNB together and really immersing ourselves into the culture and lifestyle here.

Now that my U.S. National ranking is up to 166, I am pretty much guaranteed into all qualifying events for these tournaments, which helps a lot in terms of planning ahead.  

First Singles Match: 

Well after a few great days on the practice court, all I can say is that I did not have my best day out there when it came to match day. I am in some of the best shape of my life, but for whatever reason I was feeling very lethargic and out of breath… looking back this was not at all an issue of conditioning rather I think nerves and emotions. Considering I had taken some time off in Asia along with playing the French system, this was my first future back in almost 2 months. I thought I was going to come in and continue playing solid ball, but I quickly found myself down in a major hole in what I viewed as a winnable match.

I was playing a fellow American, who is a talented player, but the day before we played a very competitive practice set, but on match day I just could not make a ball to save my life. I truly have not had a match like that in over 4 or 5 years… I was pretty disappointed and frustrated with my showing, but was not going to let that bring me down.

I got back out on the practice court and had a great few days to prepare for doubles with Jeremy. Below you can see a couple videos of me getting some training in with Rayne! We were really pushing each other out there and having a blast grinding it out for hours on the practice court.

Awesome practice set at the National Israel Tennis Center!

3 Set (10-8 in the Super-Tiebreaker) Doubles loss:

Jeremy and I came out of the gates a bit up and down in the first set, but I was especially struggling with a bit of timing on my return. That said, we both knew what we needed to do: maintain a higher first serve percentage, make a lot of returns and first volleys, and take over the net. 

The second set we did just that and ended up winning it 6-3 in a pretty dominating fashion after losing the first set 6-3. We both were holding serve easily and doing a good job mixing in “I Formation” to give our opponents different looks and force them to beat us down the line. They began making a lot more mistakes as well as giving us easy put away volleys!

Now at 1 set all, we played a deciding 10-point super tiebreaker for the match. Jeremy and I got out to a quick lead, but found us down 6-3 with me serving. We got two points pretty handily then a double fault from our opponents making it 6-6. At this point, we played a great point and went up 7-6. Then they hit a big serve and came up with a couple clutch volleys tying things up at 7-7. We lined up in I formation and Jeremy hit a great serve, but our opponent slapped an incredible winner down the line, which was a one in ten kind of shot. Credit to him for pulling the trigger in a big moment like that as there was nothing we could do. Down 8-7, we played incredible defense and returned a few overheads before our opponents whiffed one in the net tying things up at 8-8. At this point, we were right there, but Jeremy missed a backhand in the middle and then I played a mediocre return and was forced to hit an off balanced forehand… ultimately we lost 10-8. Beside that massive return winner, they got a couple very lucky bounces off of net courts in the tiebreaker, but that is tennis! Sometimes the luck is on your side and other times opponents will get breaks in these kinds of moments.

All things considered, this was a great match for us as we did a lot of things well and played pretty sound doubles giving us confidence for week 2!