Day 1: It’s an early start on a Monday morning to catch the train up to London for noon and the tube is pretty jammed. The other boys are out in Luxembourg already and me and Macca (Ian MacDonald) are joining them for the main draw starting Tuesday. We’ve had news about their first rounds and if the flight is not delayed, we should make it in time to watch their second rounds. When landing in a foreign country it’s always nice to see a friendly face, instead we had Jim (Edgar), looking like a kid in a sweet shop in his new hire car. We arrived at the club as the boys were going on for their second matches, Toby and Dan were up first. Dan had a 3 hour epic against the eventual winner of the tournament and narrowly lost 6 in the 3^rd and Toby also had a tough test, going down in straight sets. James then went on and improved the afternoon with a straight sets win. Toby and Dan were left hoping for that 1 lucky loser spot but it went to a French guy.

Day 2: Tuesday was the start of main draw and thankfully, after an early start yesterday me and James had a lie-in. I was drawn against a Slovakian and James had the guy that had beaten Toby yesterday. I won 2 and 4 and James lost 4 and 1. In the doubles, James and Dan had a tough draw against the number 1 seeds and me and Lewis had my singles opponent and a Serbian but the matches were not till the following day.

Day 3: For the second round I had the Luxemburg local hero and came through in a tight 4 and 5 win and we had a comfy doubles win. James and Dan faced much stiffer opposition in the number 1 seeds and they fought through a tight first set 7-6. The seeds then fought back and took the second 6-4. In the final set tiebreak, the boys found themselves 7-3 down when the ball burst in the point and then James put away a volley. This then lead to an argument about whether to play a let. As the argument got more and more heated, the ref stepped in and made them play a let. The boys went down 10-3.

Day 4: Into quarter-finals day and the other boys were up at 3am to catch a flight home with Jim. I was blessed with another needed lie-in. This was to be a tough day with three set matches in both singles and doubles. In the singles I faced an Italian grinder and after losing the 1^st set, recovered to win 3 in the 3^rd. The doubles was also tight but after a lapse of concentration in the 2^nd, we pulled through 10-1 in the tiebreak.

Day 5: Today did not turn out as I had hoped, losing 6 and 2 in the singles and the doubles 4 and 1. And after a late finish we had no time to properly book a flight so we gambled a bit and after receiving no confirmation, we hoped we were on a flight in the morning. To lift the spirits a bit that night we went bowling with a couple of other guys with me and Macca claiming 1 gold medal a piece. Then, both being pretty worn out and with another early start in the morning, we called it a day.

Day 6: We woke up to an absolute blizzard and hoping that it would stop snowing before our flight was scheduled. Thankfully it did and we also had the good news that we had managed to get onto our flight. And, as we landed in England, it was straight on a train up to Tipton for another tournament.