Anna Fitzpatrick Blog

Facebook chat with Anna Fitzpatrick
- Thu 11 Dec '08
- Comments
Take one journalist, one injured tennis pro and the world’s most popular online community…

We’re forever trying to think of new ways of entertaining you. So rather than insist on another written update from Tennishead blogger Anna Fitzpatrick, we thought it’d be a bit of a laugh to catch up with her with an online chat. In many ways, Anna was the perfect candidate since she’s had a lot of time on her hands lately waiting for a stress fracture to heal. The 2007 Junior Wimbledon semi-finalist hasn’t hit a ball since injuring her foot in August, but should be back on tour soon having had the all-clear recently. So, when we noticed she was online, we seized the opportunity and struck. Lucky for us, Anna is such a nice girl that she was more than happy to oblige…

Tennishead: Gotta love modern technology, eh? OK, we’re thinking of a question…

Anna Fitzpatrick: Haha… a parcel just arrived!

TH: OK, that can be our first question… what’s the parcel?

Anna: Good news… it’s for me! Bad news… it’s the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour 2008 year-end player mailing, whatever the heck that is!

TH: They’re probably wondering where you’ve been for the last four months. On that subject, how’s the foot?

Anna: It’s not too bad. I stopped wearing the big boot thing about three weeks ago, and for the first two weeks it was pretty stiff and uncomfortable to walk around. Then the pain subsided and it felt fine for a few days, but then last week I got a bit of pain again.

TH: So how close (or not) are you to hitting a tennis ball?

Anna: If the pain in my foot is only ligament-related, then I should be able to start hitting balls next week – just up and down the middle though, not a lot of movement involved.

TH: Are you waiting for more results at the moment then to determine the cause of the latest pain?

Anna: If ‘waiting for more results’ means waiting till next Wednesday when I see my physio again and we discuss if the pain has gone then yeah! If the pain disappears before the weekend, then it was ligament-related, but if it’s still there when I go to see him next week, it is probably the bone playing up again.

TH: Which, presumably, is bad news?

Anna: If it’s the bone, yeah, but my physio said his gut feeling is that it’s the ligament, which isn’t so bad.

TH: So, let’s think positive… if the pain goes this week, do you have any idea when you might be back on a match court?

Anna: Match court? Well, I’m entered into a $10,000 ITF in Glasgow in January, but if I do go there I’ll just play doubles. Either way, I’m hoping to go to the States on January 20 for five tournaments and an MCTA training block. I’d be back on March 8.

TH: So there’s light at the end of what’s been a rather long, dark tunnel. That’s good news. How’s your state of mind – you haven’t played for around four months now. Have you lost your marbles yet?

Anna: I was doing really well until about two weeks ago when I got a bad pain in my foot and I got so annoyed and fed up with it. I kind of had about three days off from ‘professionalism’! I don’t mean anything bad, I just mean I went to bed really late, got up at like 11, watched loads of TV, didn’t do any work or jobs! But then I decided I needed to get back into good habits so I did.

TH: What do you mean by ‘good habits’? We could do with some advice.

Anna: Going to bed before 2am and getting up before midday! And doing some jobs around the house to help my mum. Being a good girl.

TH: Are you still hitting the gym regularly?

Anna: Yep, every day, but I had two days off last week when my physio told me to, because I needed to do that to help determine the source of the pain.

TH: Guess the positive thing is that you’ll be mentally and physically fresh when you come back. Some sportsmen talk about realising how much they love what they do when it’s taken away from them. Has that happened to you?

Anna: Yeah, definitely. I’ve also realised that even if I put everything into my tennis career, but don’t get everything out of it that I want that I have a good stable background and a very good life to go back to. So I figure why not just go for it, without any inhibitions, and see where I can get to.

TH: Sixty-four thousand dollar question… where do you think you can get to?

Anna: Well, hopefully with more than 64 grand as my career earnings! I don’t know, that’s what I want to find out.

TH: Good answer. So what’s AF up to for Christmas. Are you in Sheffield?

Anna: Yes. My best friend from school is coming to visit and I’m going with another friend to watch Sheffield United against Crystal Palace (he’s a Palace supporter!).

TH: Are you a Blades fan then?

Anna: Absolutely! I hope there wasn’t any confusion on your part – don’t go thinking I’m an Owls fan please! That’s possibly the worst insult a Blades fan could ever get.

TH: If you’re from Sheffield, how do you decide which team to support? Is it a family thing or where you live?

Anna: My dad supports Wednesday so naturally me and my brothers are all Blades! Bramall Lane is closer to us as well though.

TH: Right, reckon we’ve occupied more than enough of your time and if the boss sees us on Facebook any longer there’s absolutely no chance they’ll believe we’re conducting an interview. Thanks very much for taking part in our ground-breaking experiment and our fingers and toes are crossed for good news about the injury… chat again soon!

Join the party!

Visit Tennishead on Facebook!
And follow Tennishead on Twitter
Anna Fitzpatrick blog: On the mend…
- Wed 08 Oct '08
As she makes a full recovery from a stress fracture, Anna describes her routine of physio, gym and Phoenix Nights…

I haven’t hit a ball for about two months now. I was playing in a tournament in Portugal in early August when I injured my left foot.

At first I thought I’d only be out for around four weeks but it was diagnosed as a stress fracture of the navicular bone in my left foot, and when my physio, Alison Rose, saw it she told me I could forget about playing until 2009.

There may be a chance I’ll get to do some training with British athletics star Jessica Ennis…

Apart from a recent family holiday in Spain, I’m now recovering at home in Sheffield. Life at the moment consists of visits to see Alison in Leeds, two gym sessions a day and a bit of Phoenix Nights on DVD thrown in for good measure to stop me going insane.

I was very disappointed and frustrated when I first got injured until the point where I was so bored sitting at home that I started going to the gym in the morning and afternoon! Before lunch I work on upper body and in the afternoon I maybe do some core work, stomach exercises or upper leg work.

Rehab is going well but it’s a bit of a waiting game to be honest. I have a sort of boot thing that I wear to protect the foot, but other than that there’s not a lot of treatment Alison can give me for a stress fracture.

It’s a weird injury in that it takes so long to heal. Every time you put your foot down there’s pressure going through the joint – that’s why it takes so long to get better. It’s tricky to tell how it’s doing – it hasn’t hurt for three or four weeks now, but I just have to keep waiting until I get the all-clear.

My friend Georgie Stoop (I speak to her a lot on the internet!) had the same injury a while ago and she and everyone else I talk to in tennis circles warns me not to try to come back too soon.

I speak to my coach Dave Sammel every few days – he’s still travelling on the tour with my good friend and fellow Monte Carlo Tennis Academy player Steffy Boffa. I also keep in touch with all my tennis mates and keep an eye on the results through the internet – probably more than I would when on tour actually.

I noticed Laura Robson made the semis at the $75K in Shrewsbury the other week which was a great effort. I wondered how she’d do in seniors after she won Junior Wimbledon in July. Obviously, she is very talented and she’s proved she can go out and beat some of the women as well.

There may be a chance I’ll get to do some training with British athletics star Jessica Ennis in the near future. Alison is also physio to her and Jess suffered the same injury as me just before the Olympics which ruled her out of going to Beijing. By coincidence, she’s also from Sheffield so Alison may put us in touch so we can hook up for some rehab training together which would be fun.

I’m trying not to put a date on when I’ll be back. I don’t want to say to myself, ‘Oh, I’ll be back by January,’ only for January to roll around and not be ready. If that happened I’d be really disappointed.

Whatever happens, I’ll let you know how it’s going…
Anna Fitzpatrick blog: My summer
- Wed 20 Aug '08
Our pro blogger, Fitzy, has had a tough time lately – she writes about weightlifting, Wimbledon and wrecking her foot.

It’s been a while since we touched base with our young pro against the world, Anna Fitzpatrick. And it’s been a busy couple of months for the Englishwoman – Olympic weightlifting sessions, an appearance at Wimbledon and a foot injury. We’ll let her explain…

Leading into the grass court season, I did quite a heavy physical block which was based around power. I was doing two or three Olympic lifting sessions a week (the three lifts I do with my trainer Jez Green are snatch, clean and push press), along with three or four medicine ball and jump sessions.

I have to take at least a month off and for the first two weeks I have to wear a cast…

I was also doing one core session each week. If it was during a tournament, I substituted in a treadmill sprint session for one of the Olympic lifting sessions. All of these workouts are designed to maximise the power generated by the body and use it in basically every move you make on a tennis court!

The highlight of the grass season was another appearance at Wimbledon – my second main draw match after playing doubles with Emily Webley-Smith in 2007. This time I partnered Anna Hawkins and we lost easily to Nathalie Dechy and Casey Dellacqua.

OK, I didn’t play amazing at Wimbledon this year, but I can’t put it down to nerves, because I really didn’t feel tight. I played some OK tennis, but just not with the level of aggression that I needed to compete with two of the top doubles players in the world.

Dechy and Dellacqua went on to make the semis, and Dellaqcua had just made the doubles final at Roland Garros, Dechy was also starting to do pretty well in singles again – she held match points against Ana Ivanovic in round two.

They were a really tough team to play against, they didn’t give us anything at all, and we couldn’t figure out a way to challenge them, and even if we had, I’m not sure I would have had the ability just yet to execute well enough to trouble them.

Overall, Wimbledon 2008 was a very good experience though and, again, I felt comfortable and at home in the environment. This year even more so than last year, because I got to know more of the senior players, instead of mainly juniors.

After Wimbledon, my coach Dave Sammel and I decided it was better to travel in Europe than to stay in Britain and play ITF grass court events in Felixstowe and Frinton. We agreed that to progress as fast as possible, it would be more beneficial to try and establish myself as a top level player abroad, rather than in the UK.

So Dave, Stefy Boffa, the Swiss girl, and I went to Spain. Sky TV commentator and former pro Barry Cowan joined us for the first 10 days as well. We played four Spanish tournaments – Valladolid, Badajoz, La Coruna and Vigo – finishing with one more in Coimbra, Potugal (my best result being a doubles final of the $25,000 in Valladolid with Stefy).

In Vigo, I was playing my first round singles match and it was only 2-1 in the first set when my foot started hurting when I was walking to change ends. I kept playing that match but it was getting worse. I took two days off, and it felt a little better. So hoping to play the final tournament of the trip in Coimbra, I played 30 minutes each day until my first round match.

I tried to play, got through one set but the pain became unimaginable so I had to pull out. I got back to the UK and had an MRI scan, which showed bone stress in the navicular bone in my left foot. So Doctor Turner at the LTA sent me straight away to have a CT scan, which came back the following day showing a fracture in the bone.

Sooooooo… I returned home to Sheffield from the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton (I got the scans in Wimbledon so stayed at NTC) about three days ago, and have been doing lots of upper body work, core and swimming since I got back.

I have to take at least a month off and for the first two weeks I have to wear a cast-boot thing when walking. I have to go down to the NTC once every two weeks to have a check-up with Doc Jackson.

The ultimate goal for me at the moment is to make qualifying for Australian Open in January 2009. It will be very tough given the limited number of tournaments I will be able to play between now and then (because of my foot), but with a lot of hard work, I believe I can do it. I will have to pick up enough points to get inside the top 250 in the world – from my current ranking of 396.

When I get back playing tournaments, I plan to stay in Europe until the end of the year competing at Challengers. We will wait until the year-end ranking lists come out to decide where to go in the new year.
Anna Fitzpatrick blog: Mexico to the max
- Tue 13 May '08
The British No.7 talks fairgrounds, Mexican coconuts and night-swimming. Oh, and she won another doubles title too…

Monte Carlo Tennis Academy player Anna Fitzpatrick is a regular blogger for Tennishead. The Sheffield 19-year-old is currently the British No.7 and the third highest ranked British women’s doubles player at No.215 in the world. Every now and again (when we remind her) she emails with news of her exploits around the world. She’s just been in touch from Mexico where she won her third $25,000 doubles title of the year…

Hey! Thought I’d fill you in on my last three weeks in Mexico. The first week was Toluca, the second Coatzacoalcos, and this week Irapuato.

The first week was pretty packed up with tennis, so I didn’t really get a chance to see the area. Last week in Coatzacoalcos, however, I was housed with a family (as well as my team-mate, Stefania Boffa) and did manage to find a bit of time to look around. We were pretty happy when we got to the house and they showed us around, it was massive! They even had a pool in the garden, but not just any pool – a pool with a waterfall!

We ended the drive by stopping at the beach to eat Coatzacoalcos-style coconuts…

The owners, Carlos and Aurora, have three kids, Alexis 12, Karla, who’s seven and Lisset, four. They were all so welcoming, they gave us Karla and Lisset’s room for the week and were there for us whenever we needed them. Stefy and I used the pool pretty much every day around lunchtime when we had a break from tennis. We often practised early morning, rested over lunch and then hit again late afternoon as it was so hot in the middle of the day.

We also had a few evenings free, on the days we’d already played matches. It was then that we really got to see Coatzacoalcos. On our first evening, our host family took us to a traditional Mexican restaurant on the street near their house. Carlos ordered us one portion of everything on the menu, so we could try all of the Mexican specialities. To be honest, a lot of them were rank (sorry Carlos!), but there were a couple we liked, so we ordered an extra portion of those and by the end of the meal we were stuffed!

A few days went by when we had matches each day, so we didn’t have the opportunity to go sightseeing so much. But after our marathon doubles semi-final, in which another Brit, Anna Hawkins, and I beat Stefy and her partner 18-16 in the third-set tie-break, Carlos thought we deserved a tour! So, Carlos and Aurora drove us round the town, showing us all the local monuments and buildings. We took loads of photos and ended the drive by stopping on the beach at 10pm, eating Coatzacoalcos-style coconuts and venturing into the sea fully clothed!

On our final night with the family, they decided that as a surprise for me winning the doubles title, they would take Stefy and I to the ‘Feria’. It’s basically a fair that comes to the city once a year for one week. There were big rollercoasters for older kids and adults and lots of little rides for smaller children. Needless to say, we had to try out every rollercoaster and ‘upside-down’ kinda ride!

We went through them one by one and by the end our adrenaline levels were through the roof! It was awesome. It took us about 10 minutes to calm down from the last rollercoaster and after that we were totally gone… completely sapped of any energy we had left! We got in the car with the family and Carlos put Shrek 3 on the DVD player. By the time the movie had even started, me, Stefy and the three kids were fast asleep! We woke up about 30 minutes later when we stopped to eat tacos on the way home, (which were so good), then no sooner had we arrived at the house, we were asleep again in bed!

After Mexico, I’m heading for the US for a couple more tournaments and then back to the UK for the grass.

Catch you soon.
Anna
Anna Fitzpatrick blog: Clutch control!
- Wed 16 Apr '08
Tennishead blogger and British No.7 Anna Fitzpatrick talks about three-point turns, parallel parking and biting points.

It’s a big day! I’m at home in Sheffield for a couple of weeks and today I passed my driving test – first time! Come on! I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it – just not to call me between 10 and 1 – but I’m ready to tell everyone that I did it now! And passed!

I actually thought I’d failed about 10 minutes into it. I was coming up to a junction and a bus pulled out in front of me and I had to slow down really quickly. I wasn’t sure whether I should have pulled out around it, but the inspector said I did the right thing.

I’d been having a lesson every other day while I’ve been at home, but before that I hadn’t driven for about six months. It’s impossible to practice while you’re away. I was so nervous.

My locker was inbetween Daniela Hantuchova and Maria Kirilenko

I’ve been hitting at the Hallamshire club in Sheffield while at home with my coach Dave and a Swiss girl we’ve been travelling with lately, Stefania Boffa. We’ve also been hitting with a Yorkshire coach, Jason Torpey, who is based at the club.

Since I last wrote I played the qualies at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami – a Tier 1 WTA event. I’d been told I might get a wild card into the qualifying (the cut-off was No.209 to get into the draw, so my ranking was too low to get direct acceptance) and it worked out which was great experience.

I had a fairly tough draw, against the fifth seed, world No.82 Tamarine Tanasugarn from Thailand, and I lost 6-2, 6-3. Despite the result, though, it wasn’t too bad. I didn’t play that great but I still created a lot of opportunities. If I’d played just a little better it could have been a lot closer or maybe even three sets. I can take confidence from the fact that she’s top 100, I didn’t play that great and it could’ve been a lot closer.

We were in Miami for four or five days so I hit a bit and watched some matches too. We got there two or three days before the qualies but it rained a lot leading up to the event so I probably only hit for about 45 minutes in the first two days. Not great preparation, but it was the same for everyone. I also hit with the British No.1 Anne Keothavong a bit. And I had some pretty cool locker-room neighbours – my locker was inbetween Daniela Hantuchova and Maria Kirilenko!

Having said that, I didn’t really get the chance to talk to the top players that were around. They tend to hit or play and then get off-site asap. The guys are a bit easier to talk to – they’re all easier going while the girls keep themselves to themselves. I chatted to Dmitri Tursunov and Vince Spadea who were both in our hotel.

Other than that, doubles has been going well lately. My Monte Carlo Tennis Academy doubles partner Ana Veselinovic and I won back-to-back $25,000 titles in the States in February and it was a shame I didn’t get to play doubles for a couple of weeks after that because of playing in Miami. My ranking has moved up after those two wins, though, and I’m now the third-highest British player in the women’s doubles world rankings at No.242.

It’s funny, I haven’t always been comfortable on a doubles court – I used to hate it. I was like a statue at the net, never moving or crossing. But because Ana and I were working on improving the same things together on the squad then we knew what each other would be doing in a match. The turning point was at a $25,000 event in Turkey in May last year. We made the final of that $25K on clay and the reason was that the academy coaches started fining us $10 if we didn’t cross at the net at least once a game! It worked!

I’m on the road again at the end of this week. On Thursday I leave for Mexico where we play three hard court events (one $10K and two $25Ks), then two more $25Ks in the US, one on green clay and one on hard. Then we’ll be back in the UK for one week’s training on grass and then into the first grass tournament of the summer at Surbiton.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

Fitzy

Web links

Monte Carlo Tennis Academy