You only get one break that you can call during a match, and it's only sixty seconds long. How should you use it?

Here are four reasons you might consider a time-out, in rough order of how often you should use this reason. (Ideally, you should have more than one of these reasons.) One catch – for older players and players not in good physical shape, “To rest” is likely the most important one. The best timeout might be when you do three or four of these at the same time!

1. To regain your focus.
2. To think about tactics or discuss them with your coach.
3. To rest.
4. To let a hot opponent cool off.

Far too many players use their timeout as a desperation move when they are on the brink of losing. That’s too late. Instead, use it when it can make a difference. For example, if playing a very strong opponent in a best of five, many players will lose the first two games decisively and fall way behind in the third game, and then call a timeout. Instead, perhaps call a timeout halfway through that second game (or even the first), when you start falling behind, so you can clear your mind and consider new tactics before you fall behind 0-2. That could turn the whole match around, which is unlikely to happen if you wait until you are down 0-2 and way behind in the third.

One interesting thing – the Chinese like to call timeouts when they are on the verge of winning a game or match, such as serving up 10-8. It’s a way to lock up that game. But this differs from player to player – if you are completely focused and know what you want to do, there’s no reason to call a timeout there.

I’ve watched players, even top players, spend hour after hour practicing the simplest serves imaginable. Yes, you need to practice basic serves so you develop near-perfect control of their height, depth, and direction. But it’s drudgery to practice such serves over and Over and OVER when there’s so much more you can do.

Serve practice is where you also work on putting trickery into your serves, in particular deception. Imagine you are serving to a real player. Practice hiding your spin with fast racket movements where you exaggerate one direction of the racket while contacting the ball in a different way with a barely noticeable twitch of your racket. Or work on maximizing your spin to the point where the ball seemingly explodes into flame. Or, after developing super-spinny serves, learn to use the same motion but serve with no-spin by contacting the ball near the handle. Or work on fast and spinny aggressive serves where you jam your opponent’s middle or spin it away from him at the corners. Or fast dead ones, especially at their elbow, that they put in the net.

There is so much more to serving than just putting the ball in play. If you are doing it right, it’s both a science and an art – and a blast to practice!

You’ve all played them – a tournament match that is simply uncompetitive, where you don’t have to try and you’ll still win easily. These can be dangerous matches. Why?

First, make sure it’s a “laugher” match. I once coached a match where my player was rated about 700 points higher than the opponent, and won the first game 11-0. Another of my students had a tougher match starting, so after talking briefly to the first player – mostly about keeping his focus throughout - I went to the other match. Afterwards, I came back and my player had won - deuce in the fifth!!! The simplest way to avoid this is to assume no matches are “laughers.” But even if you assume that, some of them are laughers. What to do in them?

First, keep your focus. It is far easier in a tournament to keep your focus than it is to recover it once you’ve lost it. Winning a game too easily is a common reason to lose focus – which is what happened in the match above. So, focus every point as if it were the most important point you’ve ever played. That should be true of every point you play in a tournament. (An occasional exception is for older or out-of-shape players, or when you have a lot of matches, and so intentionally play less actively in such an “easy” match so as to save yourself for later. But be careful of doing this as it can backfire.)

Second, while you might not need to focus on tactics or smart play against a much weaker player, you don’t want to mess up your own fundamentals by going easy and thereby not playing your normal game. That’s a quick way to mess up your game. That means looping against a push the same as you would against someone in a more competitive match. Otherwise you are just practicing playing poorly. This doesn’t mean ripping everything, it simply means using the same types of loops and other shots you’d use against a stronger player. You can push more to save energy, but don’t overdo it.

Third, work on serves and other fundamentals. Playing a match like this allows you to practice serves and other shots without worrying about the outcome. For example, when I used to play much weaker players in a tournament, my favorite tactic was to just serve backspin over and over, they’d push it back, and I’d have to move and loop every one of them effectively, including good placement. I didn’t need to rip the ball, but I’d practice the strong loops I’d want to use in a more serious match.

Lastly, don’t think of a “laugher” match as a waste of time. They are the perfect time to work on your focus, your fundamentals, and whatever aspects of your game that might need practice. And practice makes perfect – even if the opponent needs a lot more than you.

Perhaps the easiest way to stop an opponent’s big serve and loop is the loaded push. Many players don’t understand how effective this can be for a simple reason – until they can do it, it isn’t particularly effective, and so when they first try it, it doesn’t work. And so they stop trying to give loaded pushes. And so players never understand just how important those extra few revolutions of backspin can be.

A key is the thinking involved. When players learn to push, they generally think of it as a “safe” backspin shot to keep the ball in play. And so they push with “good” backspin, and that’s it. But a good loop generally beats a good push, and so something more is needed.

And that’s where you want to develop that loaded push. That means stop thinking in terms of “safeness,” and think in terms of “How much backspin can I put on the ball?” (But even a loaded push is very consistent, once learned.) Focus on grazing the ball, and using both the forearm and wrist to really brush into the ball vigorously. The goal is to force your opponent into putting the ball into the net. Load the ball with so much backspin it’ll practically die on your opponent’s racket. Do that, and opponents will struggle.

This doesn’t mean you push all or most serves back, though that can be effective against many opponents. It’s still highly effective to loop long serves, while against shorter serves, learn to push long or short, or to flip. But if you are going to push long, do it EFFECTIVELY – and that means not just pushing to keep the ball in play, but a LOADED push, one that the opponent often will struggle to attack.

Learn a push that is loaded if you want your rating exploded!

There’s a common saying in high-level sports: “Don't practice until you do it right. Practice until you can't do it wrong." This is another way of saying ingrain the fundamentals. You can never practice the fundamentals too much as that's how you make it so you can't do it wrong. 

Far too often I hear players say, “I already practiced that, I can do it.” What they say is correct, but meaningless in the context. The goal of fundamentals is that they should be nearly unerring unless your opponent does something to force a mistake. Block a loop? You should be able to do this over and Over and OVER – unless the opponent varies the loop, gives you speeds or spins you aren’t used to, moves it around, and so on. But in a drill, where you get the same ball over and over, you should strive for perfection. If you keep making mistakes, then you probably are drilling too fast.

Note that “strive for perfection” doesn’t mean you reach it, but if you strive to reach it in rote drills, then you’ll start seeing results in regular rallies as those ingrained fundamentals become automatic. The irony is that players below the advanced stages often have trouble ingraining these fundamentals because their practice partners are often their level, and if neither is consistent, then neither gets consistent practice and so they don’t ingrain the fundamentals as well as they should. Why? Because they drill too fast! Slow down to speeds both sides are consistent at, and then you can ingrain the shots.

And then you can practice until you can’t do it wrong.