I've always wanted to implant a camera in the eyes of up-and-coming players to record what they see when they watch top players play. They should see all sorts of great technique and tactics, right? But I'm afraid what I'd actually see is this. Yes, all they're really watching is the ball going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. You don't learn much from that, do you?

Instead, to learn from top players when you watch them, focus on the player and what he's doing. See how he prepares for each shot (positioning and ready stance), how he executes the shot (backswing, forward swing, contact, follow through), and how he repositions himself for the next shot. THIS is how you learn, not from watching a small sphere shoot back and forth!

And now we're going to do a little exercise. Go to this Selective Attention Test (81 sec), and follow instructions. Notice how easy it is to see what you are looking for, while completely missing other things? Make sure when you watch a top player to focus on each aspect of what he does, and try to get a complete picture. Otherwise you might miss the obvious dancing gorilla of his technique!

Often I see players do drills where they try smacking the ball back and forth as if they were pros. (If you are a pro, then this doesn't apply to you.) They rally at a pace they can't control, and so their balls fly all over the court or miss. If they do hit but not at the place they are supposed to be drilling to, then the opponent's shots go all over the court or miss. It's pandemonium! Drills should not be, "hit-hit-mishit-miss." They should be "hit-hit-hit-hit-hit-hit-hit-hit-hit-hit..."

Some think that by practicing at such speeds, they can learn to play at that speed. The part they are missing is that they are practicing missing as much as they are practicing hitting the table! By flailing away at the ball, they aren't improving their technique, control (putting the ball where you aim), or consistency. Instead, work on having great technique, control, and consistency. Have a coach or top players look at your strokes (or watch them on video yourself and compare to top players) so you have good technique. Do drills where you focus on hitting the ball within six inches or so of where you are aiming for control. Count how many shots you can do in a drill to work on consistency. When you have those three, hitting hard is easy.

And then, maybe, just maybe . . . you'll be a pro!

Players often hold back on their trickiest serve (often long ones) until it's close. And that's sometimes a good idea. But there are three problems with that.

First, you won't know until you use it if the serve will be effective against this player. Second, if you use it early in each game, then that game might never get close. As long as you space it out, a tricky serve stays effective, so you don't need to hold back on it too much. If it's effective the first time early in the game, then perhaps come back to it in the middle of the game, and perhaps at the end again. And third, once the opponent knows you have this tricky serve (usually long ones), he has to guard against it - making your other serves (often short ones) more effective!

If a student of mine has a tricky serve - often a long serve - I regularly tell them to use it the first point of the match. If it works, then it's a judgement call how often to use it. The more you use this serving tactic of using your trickiest serves early, the more experienced you'll get at judging when to use them.

One cautionary note - if you want to reach the advanced levels, over-relying on tricky serves - especially long ones - can really hurt your development. Focus on shorter serves that won't give you as many outright serve winners but will set up your attack. Then mix in tricky serves for free points and so the opponent has to watch for them.

Most serves are too simplistic. They get the job done, but simply aren't done with real trickiness in mind. For example, a player serves backspin with a backspin motion. They may learn variations, such as a side-backspin serve, where the racket travels in a different direction in hitting the ball, or a pure sidespin. But the direction of the racket at contact is somewhat easy to see.

Why make it easy on the opponent? Sometimes, just before or after contact, change the direction of your racket so your opponent has to pick up whether you hit the ball before or after the change of direction. Better still, learn to hit it either before or after the change of direction, giving different spins with the same motion. You can also develop a semicircular serving motion, so the opponent has to figure out where in that semicircle you spun the ball - there will be different spins depending on when you hit the ball.

Developing serves where you hit the ball on different parts of the swing are tricky. What's easy is doing fast changes of direction just before or after contract, where the serve itself is seemingly simple, but the opponent is caught off guard by the change of direction of the racket. For example, with a forehand pendulum serve, right after contact pull the racket away from you, as if doing a reverse pendulum serve. Or set up to do a reverse pendulum serve (with racket close to you, with the motion going away from you), but "miss" the ball on the out-swing, and then do a regular pendulum serve, with the racket hitting the ball moving toward you. In both cases, it's a forehand pendulum serve, but you've added deception to make things harder for the receiver. Isn't that the goal?

Some players do this type of thing on every serve; some do it as a "surprise" to catch the opponent off guard. Try it out and you'll be surprised how many "free" points you get!

Developing good serves involves watching players with good serves, getting good coaching, and lots and lots of practice. But sometimes, after all that practice, it's hard to execute the serves in a game as you do in practice. There's a simple reason for that - pressure. There's no pressure when practicing serves, while in a real match there is. It's especially difficult to serve fast & deep under pressure (where players often either miss or slow them down for safety, thereby lowering their effectiveness), in controlling the depth (where that "perfect" half-long serve - where the second bounce would be right on the end-line, now goes long and gets looped), and serving very low to the net. How to overcome this?

Easy - put pressure on yourself! After you've practiced your serves to the point where they are near where you want them, imagine you are playing real games. Imagine an opponent. Really get into the mind-set, and soon you'll feel the same pressure. Then you can practice serving under that pressure. Make sure that, under this pressure, you can still control the speed and consistency of the deep serves, and the depth of the half-long serves (second bounce right about the end-line), and the height of all serves. Most players tend to serve a little longer under pressure, and so their short serves suddenly get looped.

You might also add to the practice by putting targets on the table, to work on your accuracy under pressure. Put a bottle on the corners and practice hitting them with your deep serves at "deuce," or even "down match point."

If you can't execute your best serves under the pressure of a match, then you haven't mastered those serves, no matter how well you do them in practice. So . . . master them!