Headed Home from Japan

Written by: Staff on 5th July 2013

Headed Home from Japan |

Narita Airport, Japan – After suffering a pretty close loss in the second round of the Kashiwa $10k Futures Event, I’m finally headed back home for a little down time. I want to first talk about the match itself (while it’s sorta fresh in my mind) then continue to delve into some of my thoughts about the trip overall during the next few days.

You could call it a heart-breaking loss or you could call it a necessary experience. I honestly didn’t feel bad after losing 5-7 7-6(6) despite being up 5-4 in both sets, being two points away from winning the first, and losing four set points in the second set. I felt bad about the fact that the trip is over and there are no more tournaments to play. A win yesterday would’ve meant making my first quarterfinal and getting even more ATP points, but it just wasn’t in the cards. My opponent simply played better than me on those six crucial points, especially the set points in the second set. My main weapons let me down in those moments and I wasn’t able to rely on them. So I can’t blame anything or curse the world for bad luck, it just happened to play out that way.

I was just lucky to play as well as I did. I woke up with sore hips, battered/blistered toes, and a tough match up to begin. It also didn’t help that somehow the public bus I usually took to the Tennis Training Center in Kashiwa ended up taking me someplace else the day of the match haha I’m not too bent out of shape though, I attacked the net on my terms, and I’m happy I played my game in the most important moments. That means I’m improving

I suppose it wouldn’t be Japan unless there were giant stuffed animals walking around right? This place is great. I love the food, love the culture, love the entire experience here. Can’t wait to be back. The Solinco bags look really slick too, I can’t believe how much attention I’ve gotten during my whole trip from tournament directors and other players.

Just really want to thank everyone out there for the support I’ve gotten the past couple weeks. Life on the road alone is tough but I never truly felt that way because of all the great friends I knew along the way as well as the new life-long friends that I happened to meet. More about this later on

Time to get some good airplane food, drink, and movies and finally give my body some rest. Ciao!

Topics: Atp, Japanese tennis news, Kashiwa tennis news, Tennis Training Center, Thomas Shubert