Day 5 Monday 22nd August 2011
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Slept like a baby last night. I think I am on New York time finally. Had a ham and cheese croissant for breakfast. It was good but the cheese is different. So yellow. I have never seen cheese that yellow. Maybe I need to get out more. Whenever I order food over here they always look at me like “That’s it? You sure you don’t want more?”
It has been a slow morning. 11.15 am and I have only done one racquet so far. We are expecting 300 racquets today. Which means we are going to get totally smashed this afternoon.Could be a very late night. I have Powerbars and Red Bull to get me through.
I have taped my fingers today. They were ok after yesterday but I only did about 15 racquets. They will get a much harder workout today. I have found these round bandaids which are perfect to protect the tops of my fingers. I brought a supply with me but I cannot find them anywhere here. When I run out I might be in trouble. We’ll see how that goes.
We left the courts at just after 10pm tonight. Half hour ride home so ready for bed around midnight.
We did 290 racquets for the day. It did not stop from about 1pm onwards. There were a lot of racquets coming in. The bandaids are doing ok. My fingers feel like they have seen some action but are not painful at all. I have done a lot of racquets today. I am in the groove now. It always feels a bit slow the first day, but now I’m just in the groove. The machine is working great. We all have brand new machines. The clamps are working very well. No slippage at all and no crushed string. My machine was out of calibration this morning. It was out by a kilo. I recalibrated and then calibrated it 3 times after that. It was fine and has not needed further calibration.
I have 2 racquets to do first thing tomorrow morning. First round of qualifying starts tomorrow morning at 10 so we expect a morning rush plus there will be some on-court racquets as well.
I need to buy red bull on h way to the courts tomorrow. After 2 days stringing I have exhausted my supply. There is this supplement over here called “5 hour energy”. I might try that out tomorrow instead of the red bull. We’ll see how that goes.
Shane Mikic is the proshop manager for the Tennis Gear stores and their online store www.tennisgear.com.au in Brisbane. He has over 16 years racquet stringing experience and is currently part of the Wilson Global Stringing Team at the 2011 US Open. The following blog shares his experiences during his time in the Wilson Stringing room.
