Practice play should be designed for one thing-to make you a better player. I was watching some practice play recently at our Elite Camp and it made me think of my practice partners that I played back in the day.
The best practice partner I ever had and I were reminiscing recently. Once we entered the court we hated each other. He was a leader and still is. He never said much but from the first time we ever played it was clear all he wanted to do was to kick my butt. That in turn fired me up to kick his. I could never play him more than twice per week and never back to back days. There was very little laughing, talking, and no smiling unless one of us beat the other.
We usually drew a crowd watching since we played in semis and finals quite a bit. That was like pouring gasoline on an already well-blazing fire as neither one of us wanted to lose.
Years later as we are talking we realized those practice matches were very close to the real thing; tournament play. We also realized that practice partners like that are far and few between. People are too nice in practice.
Now admittedly some people can practice “nice” and then turn it on in tournaments. That never worked for me. I had to compete hard and focus on improving. I do believe most players I coach would be better if they had more intense matches in practice. Skip the nicey nice and head for competition city. Compete like you would in a tournament. Build tournament type matches in with your skill and general play workouts. I had three styles of players I played in practice. One-my tournament player as mentioned above. Two-my player who cooperated with me-gave me setups to practice and I in turn did the same for him. Three-and this was maybe the one who helped me the most, was the player I could beat on my worst day but the player I could play and work on all of my shots. I might lose some games experimenting with serves etc but I improved my game maybe the most with player three.
Back to player One-that was the player that allowed me to win “pressure” matches and deal with the intensity of the tournament. For whatever reason many players play well in practice but not tournaments. Your game if much better if that is reversed and you work on improving. Find that one player and play them hard; very hard and with no timeouts, racquet up to receive serve etc. Those tactics can be saved for when you need them or you can both agree to use those tactics to get used to tournament play. I have used both methods and both work!
Go Get’em Tigers!