Abbie has been out 6 months with a wrist injury so result not unexpected. This was only her second tournament since returning to matchplay. She is playing next in Mallorca 2 and then Melilla

theumpire wrote:

---

Abbie has been out 6 months with a wrist injury so result not unexpected. This was only her second tournament since returning to matchplay. She is playing next in Mallorca 2 and then Melilla

---

Hi, welcome to the site I guess you're Abbie's dad ?

Thanks for the info, we didn't know about the injury. It must be tough for young players to be out for that long and I guess that with a wrist injury, you wouldn't be able to practise at all.

I went to Sutton last week and watched Abbie's match against Danielle Brown in the qualies. I think that the rust from being out for so long showed in the first set but once she got into it she started to dictate more of the rallies and gave Dani quite a few problems, was unlucky not to take it to 3 sets. I was impressed with her forehand and retrieving, which was pretty effective in the 2nd set.

Does Abbie train at one of the Spanish academies ? I ask, as she seems to play a lot of tournaments on Spanish clay. Like Julia Bone and Anna F, her game looked well suited to clay and slow hard courts.

Best of luck to her next week in Mallorca, hopefully she can get some confidence boosting wins    

 

-- Edited by ultimateshedman at 12:37, 2007-02-04

Abbie has been training at the PRO-AB Tennis Academy in Barcelona since Sept 05 and plays at The Sutton Tennis Academy if she comes to England.

Yeah Slabba trains at Sutton with the elite squad, coached by Nick Weal.

The Sutton tennis academy is closely linked with the Barcelona one. It says on their website that "The opportunity for coach and player exchange will ensure that both Academies provide their players with excellent training and integrated environments with options to use either location as a training base."

Barcelona tennis academy website:
http://www.barcelonatennisacademy.com

The PRO-AB Academy is not linked to Sutton.

PRO-AB is affiliated to the Catalan Tennis Federation and is one of the main training centres for top Spanish players, both junior and senior.

In terms of cost - it is less expensive than Sanchez/Casal and Brughera, but being smaller, has less costs to cover.

As far as funding is concerned, Abbie receives no LTA funding......so costs are down to what I have seen called 'The Bank of Mum and Dad!!

When she played junior ITF events I was fortunate to travel quite a bit with her but now she travels with the academy. If she comes back to England for a tournament she often goes with other competitors.
I think I am right in saying that Abbie met with Judy Murray at a tournament some years ago and she offered some good advice about junior player development.