Your game has been excellent and you’re nailing it. But when you step on the court on the big day, you feel your muscles tightening. You choke.
Almost all players can relate to this feeling. Especially, when serving.
All of us practice our serves regularly to make it better, and that works. We’ve already discussed a few tips to improve the serve. And, if you practice your serve 2-3 times per week using those tips, you will definitely experience the refinement over time.
But as said earlier, many of us get so tensed up in a match that we cannot enjoy our new weapon, a better serve.
There is a way to counterfeiting the pressure of a real match just by servicing in an empty tennis court. All you need to do is assume that you’re playing against one imaginary player named X, a tough but fair player.
While playing against him, you serve every point and whenever you hit the serve, you win the point. And when you miss a serve; Mr.X gets the point (Too harsh? Well, the pressure is a privilege).
If both of your serves make faults, you lose the game. Play as many sets as possible and try to defeat Mr.X.
If you’re thinking it is just like normal serve practice, then make the game a little more challenging by putting some additional conditions for your first serve.
You can do this by adding rules like the second bounce must not happen behind the baseline. Or, it does not qualify as a first serve. So either you do the first serve again or it’s a fault and you move on to the second serve.
If you want to make both serve more effective, then add conditions for your second serve also like it must have a slice on it or it must land near the corner, likewise. Each time, you can add more requirements to make the game little harder, increasing difficulty of beating Mr. X.
You can modify this practice if the tyranny of losing games for double faults is too much for you. But, you must try to follow the plan in order to feel the pressure of a real match.
If you defeat Mr. X with a bagel, every day, for consecutive two-three weeks, then you can say that you have a match ready serve that is immune, or at least less dependable on the whims of match nerves!
That’s all for today. We’ll come back to SERVE you more tips to improve your game with new posts. Until then, book a tennis court nearby on Playo and start the doing the above mentioned exercise.
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