Player Diary: Michael Maze - April 26, 2006
Apr. 28, 2006

Courtesy ITTF I woke up at 6:50am and then went with the whole team for a fifteen-minute run, I'm staying at the Maritim Hotel, next to the venue, there's a park nearby so we went running in the park. After the run we all had breakfast together, that would be about 7:20am and we left for the hall at 8:10am.

I glued my racket prior to leaving the hotel so that I was ready to practice; I used new rubbers; everyday, I use new rubbers on my bat and it's always the same procedure for gluing.

It only took us five minutes to walk to the hall to practice. I warmed up for twenty minutes; then I practiced with Martin Monrad for just over half an hour. After that, I had twenty minutes rest, then I practiced again with Martin for a maximum of five minutes, just a short practice.

At 9:30am I glued my bat again, I always glue my bat half an hour before I'm going to play.

We only had one match today; that was against China. I had to play first and I had to play Wang Liqin. I felt I played quite well, he won the first game, I won the second but then he won the next two and I lost. After the match, I did some stretching to warm down.

Martin then played Ma Lin and he lost and Christian Larsen was beaten by Chen Qi, so we lost three-nil.

After that I walked to the `Mixed Zone' to answer questions from the reporters; half the reporters were from Denmark and the half from China. I think that took about fifteen to twenty minutes and when I'd finished I walked to the restaurant where I joined the other members of our team for lunch. I arrived for lunch at about 12:00 noon.

Lunch over, we all went back to the hotel and had a meeting where we watched the video of the match and discussed what had happened; then I rested, I plugged in my laptop and went on the internet.

I slept for about two hours in the afternoon and in the evening we went into Bremen for dinner, I think it's a good idea to go out of the venue, have a good break from everything and just relax in a pleasant restaurant.

After today's match I felt very tired, it's really hard to play every day; it's hard both physically and mentally. We've played three matches, we beat the Netherlands but we lost to Sweden and China, we still have to play Italy and Romania.