Rising sophomore and All-American Irina Falconi has agreed to blog for RamblinWreck.com this summer. She will keep Yellow Jacket fans up-to-date on her training as she prepares for her second season on the Flats.
July 30, 2009
Entry #12
Today has been a long day. Very, very, long. But, “longness” aside, it’s been great.
When Ashley and I woke up this morning, we were both trying to talk each other into sleeping JUST a little bit more. (Sidenote: Comfort Suites has ridiculously tempting beds)
So after breakfast, and our new found routine of Starbucks in the morning, we headed to the courts with some suspicious clouds up ahead. After checking in with Bunny and Missy (the ITF Supervisors, and probably the two nicest people EVER) about the radar, we were good to go. Maria and Yasmin were both on at 10 a.m., while I was second after 10, playing right after Maria was done with her match.
Ashley, the cool chick that she is, agreed to warm me up for my match against the tournament’s top seed, Coco Vandeweghe. After the warm-up, I sat with Kathy and watched Maria and Yasmin’s match, until it was time for my battle to begin.
So just to give you a visual on the match:
Irina – 5’4 on a good day.
Coco – 6’1 on a bad day?
You can just imagine how silly it looked when we were both standing at the net. Just imagine.Alright, so silly stuff aside, we were both out there to win. I started off the match serving and I held fairly easily. My good service game was put to shame once she got her serve going and won it at love.
Alright…so…this was going to be interesting.
After a couple of more hold and breaks, Coco gets the first break, and breaks me to get up 4-3. After a few holds from both of us, she sneaks in the first set from a backhand error in the net brought to you by yours truly.
I wasn’t playing my best. My forehand was off, my first serve percentage was low, and I was having a hard time keeping more than four balls in play. It was a little frightening at first, but I knew that once I got my groove going, it was going to look more like a match.
Moving along, the second set started off pretty much the same way—-I held, she held, I held. So on and so forth. Finally, in the 7th game of the second set, I manage to break. Oh, it was a glorious moment! I treasured it for about two seconds before I realized I had to hold and break again if I wanted to take the second set swiftly. After I accomplished that mission, I treasured it again for about two seconds, before realizing that I had yet another set to win to take the match.
The third set was definitely the best set for me—till about 4-1.
At 4-1, I had two chances to get it to 5-1 on my serve—TWO!!! After screwing that up and getting broken, it was her turn to serve, and she decides to just open another can of ridiculously good serves, to make the score a little tighter—4-3 on serve.
I manage to hold my serve again, and try to break hers. After not being able to deliver, the score was set at 5-4. So now’s its my turn to serve it out—-doesn’t go that great yet again. So then it become 5 all. Her serve. Not cool.
I manage to break. Time to serve it out—again.
Follow Irina Falconi at The Heartland Clinic USTA Women’s Classic – St. Joseph, Mo.
