Until you get the right tools to learn to control yourself emotionally, practice and playing matches are going to be and feel like two very different things for you.
The thing is that in practice you don't have the pressures brought about by the possibility of losing to what you perceive as an inferior player -for example-, or the pressures brought about by trying to live up to the standard you expect of yourself as a player, etc, etc. These factors and many more have an effect on the quality of your focusing, your state of mind and consequently on your emotional response to circumstances and the dynamics of a match.
Your service is most likely just a victim of what's referred to as "choking" in tennis, in which your level of performance and confidence, (which is usually a non-issue during practice) becomes affected and decreases significantly under match conditions.
I could give you some nutshell advise on this matter but I'd rather recommend you get the full benefit by becoming a regular visitor/subscriber of this website and familiarize yourself with all of the other Tomaz materials. They empowered me and my game.
Best of Luck!
Dec 08, 2008 Rating
Match pressure by: Anonymous
Hi Rishabh,
You cannot practice match pressure alone!
Pressure comes in many forms, these are the progressions any player has to overcome:
1. 'to succeed the shot' (tsts) by handling a drophit 2. to succeed the shot (tsts) by handling an incoming ball 3. tsts by handling movement to the ball 4. tsts by handling various distance 5. tsts by handling various spins 6. tsts by handling various heights 7. tsts by handling various speeds
All these pressures you have to handle in the following stages: 1. just succeed the goal 2. co-operatively succeeding the goal with a partner 3. then against an opponent.
For the service you can do the following progressions:
1. tsts by hitting the serve in the servicebox 2. tsts by hitting it in various zones in the servicebox 3. tsts by hitting it deeper in the servicebox 4. tsts by hitting it with various spins 5. tsts by hitting it with various speeds
Practical:
Stage 1
you train progression 1
Stage 2
a.you measure your effort, example 15 out of 20
b.you play against yourself a game, if you succeed the goal you lead 15-0, if you don't you the score is 0-15, and so on...
c. you co-operatively play a game without stopping the point after you service, but you record your service effort...
Stage 3
you play against an opponent and you record or let it do it by a friend/coach/... your service goal!
Use top spin second serve as confidence builder by: Tom
I do practise my serve a lot too.
I can hit incredible high percentage first serve on practice court, but I don't resort to my first serve right away when I play game.
I start by using top spin second serve for both my first and second serves, as they say you are only as good as your second serve. As I gain confidence with my percentage and placements, I will begin to crank it up with harder top spin serve. Usually by the 4th game I would start hitting my flat first serve, the percentage may not be where I want it to be but at least I have my second serve to back me up. I will keep hitting my first flat serve from then on, even if I end up losing the match at least I know I am losing on my terms and not because I am holding back on my game. One of the things that Tomaz said in his book was that if you shy away from some of your shots that you perceive as not very good, you will never get anywhere with it. But if you nurture it and accept it as it is right now and continue to practise it, you will eventually get better. It is always the fear of losing that prevents us from playing our best. I don't like losing, but I even dislike losing more when I feel that I am throwing the game away. Have fun on the court and go for your serve.
