At tournaments, players warm their shots up – forehands, backhands, looping, blocking, and so on. Then they go out to play – and half the points start out with their serve, one of the few things in their game that they didn’t warm up! This has always puzzled me.

I think most believe that serves don’t really need to be warmed up, that they can pull them out at any time without practicing or warming them up first. This might be true if you have truly weak serves, whose only purpose is to get the ball in play. If so, then may I humbly suggest getting some coaching so you can learn to serve well, and then practice your serves until they are a real weapon, as they should be? Then, once your serves are at a threatening level . . . that’s when you need to warm them up before matches so you can have them at 100%. Even simple serves are better when you warm them up – you serve them lower, with more spin, and with more depth control. If you warm them up first, you can also serve more deep, aggressive serves without worry about serving off the end. (What, you don’t have a deep, aggressive serve that threatens your opponent? Develop them! And note that they should either be fast, breaking serves with spin, or fast and dead.)

When I go to tournaments, I often bring a bag of balls and a ball net for picking them up. When I get the chance, I go to a back table and practice them. Or find a practice partner and take turns serving, where the other player works on receive. Or just catch your partner’s serve and serve back. Then, when it’s time to play a match, they are much more effective than they would be without practicing them first.