Improve Your Match Play By Changing How You Play Practice Matches

Regardless of what type of player you are - junior player, USTA league player, ladies' league doubles player, or recreational player - you can improve your play substantially by using your practice matches to improve some aspect of your game.

What is a practice match?  Any match whose result makes no difference to you or you and your partner whatsoever.  In other words, your overriding goal is not winning the match.  This is an important distinction for one reason - when you mentally choose to focus on winning - you stop focusing on improving, and instead just do what "feels right."  You resort to your normal habits.  If you can make improvement the overriding goal, and put winning on the back burner, then you can use match play to your advantage.

Players who always focus on winning in every match never improve their level of play.

So what to work on?  That is up to you.  You can choose something technical, tactical, or mental/emotional.  Let's tackle them one at a time, and give you some suggestions for each.

Technical - Regardless of what you are working on, your goal is the production of the correct technique on every point.  This means you attempt the proper technique every opportunity you have.  You do not waver from this approach, even if you are making errors.  The purpose is to get better at the new technique, not win the match.  The only way to make new technique "match tough," is to force yourself to use in in matches.  Plus, when you are learning new technique, if you resort beck to your "old" technique in order to win, you are making it more difficult to learn the new technique.  You would actually set yourself back.  Remember, it's OK to lose a match, and it's ok to make errors while you are learning a new technique.  If you play doubles, it will suffice for you to be upfront with your partner that you are going to be practicing a new technique.  This way, your partner's expectations for winning are lowered, and you might even convince them to work on something also.  If you are able to win or at least play well using the new technique, just think about the confidence that will give you.

Tactical - My personal term for this is called "playing with restrictions."  Essentially you force yourself to do certain patterns of play, no matter the outcome.  As an example, imagine you want to improve hitting your return of serve and attacking the net - "chipping and charging" so to speak.  Well, you would attempt this tactic on every service point, and force yourself to get to the net.  If you blow three returns in a row, or dump the volley in the net three times in a row, the fourth point you chip and charge again.  No conscience.  You are there to work on your game.  Even if your long term goal is not to use this tactic on every point, you are certainly going to get comfortable doing the tactic under match conditions.  In this case, you are playing the practice match with your "B or C" game, and improving it.  This will only serve to improve the effectiveness of your "A" game by giving you more options and variety.  If you start winning practice matches with your B or C game, you will know your overall game improved tremendously.

Mental/Emotional -  This part of your game needs to be practiced to perfect as well.  Whether you are working on routines between points, or working on breathing out wen your opponent strikes the ball and when you strike the ball, or working on staying calm through adversity, you must practice them to improve them.  Like the technical and tactical items, you must force yourself to practice them no matter the result or outcome of the point/match.  If you are working on a set routine between every point, then this is your focus for the match - not where your return serve, not how you serve, not the success or failure of your volleys.  Only the routines matter.

As you can tell, focusing on something in your matches rather than the outcome takes great mental focus and attention.  That alone will improve your ability to focus in a match that DOES count.

Improvement can happen in lessons, in the gym, or in matches.  No matter the venue, you must be attentive toward what you are trying to improve.  Most professional and top level junior players target certain events so they have their peak performance occur at those events.  As an example, Pete Sampras would use non majors to work on his game.  Hence a reason he only won 64 tournaments in his illustrious career that saw him win 14 majors.  But it is instructive that one of the greatest players of all time didn't make winning every event his priority.  Instead, his goal was winning one or more of four tournaments a year.

We are just as capable as Pete Sampras to not only target certain events/matches to play our best and focus on winning, but also use other matches and events as practice to help us improve enough to play our absolute best at the targeted events.  So next time you're playing a practice match, practice something, it will help you win later.