R2: Alicia starts to feel comfortable on court

[4] Alicia Mead (ENG) 3-1 Enora Villard (FRA)  11-7, 11-5, 7-11, 11-4 (38m)

Enora was not that chuffed by the decisions in the first and second game, which seemed to fuel her up maybe? She found some nice length/hold and managed to dominate the third rather comfortably.

Good reassessment from the English lady in the 4th, leading the whole way and closing it in 7m.

Alicia : I feel I played well in patches today. Some rallies, I played on my own terms, and some I let her dictate, and I was taking the ball late, and I was stuck behind, not doing enough to get back in front again.

In my mind that was a lot on me. And I started to get rewards and my length back when I started my spots when I was in front but it show how quickly these kind of players can get back in front and get the lead again when you take your foot off the gas for a second, when you don’t fully concentrate for a few points, they can easily take advantage.

And she did that well. I wasn’t playing the ball through enough, she was picking me off, so that’s all credit to her, she shows how tricky she can be on the day if you are not hitting your targets well enough.

Well, funny you would ask, but as you know, I was sick in Cairo (food poisoning) and for a few weeks after, and after that, I got COVID! So basically, I’ve been sick for 6 weeks. And my lungs were suffering.

I tried to do a lot of conditioning, getting back to being comfortable on court again which I definitely did there. I was not struggling as much as I did on court for the last month, and that’s a good thing.

I’m maybe trying to build up some volume again with the training, because I was not doing enough when I was sick, so these matches are very good for me, just to get stuck in, if the squash is not up to speed, if I can charge around  and make it up for that physicality, then I’m happy to start with: there is a lot to build up on….