Make your knock-up work

The 'knock-up' or 'warm-up' is the time before you start a match and is an important time for you to learn about the court and your opponent.

You can learn more about the opponent by giving them plenty of time to hit the ball. This means not hitting it lots of time back to yourself. And in anycase it is not considered sportsmanlike to hog the ball to yourself. Hit it a couple of times back to yourself and then send it over to them. Watch them closely.

Use your hit to them to look for weaknesses in their technique. Are they standing so far back that they struggle to pick up a low ball? - maybe they will not fetch your drop shots. If you lob the ball up above their head do they have trouble volleying? Can they do a volley back to the back corner or only hitting down into the front of the court? If you know what they can do then you know how to cover it.

If the ball gets past them can they dig it out of the back corner? Can you tell when they move their position and racquet to use a boast to get it out? Does it look like a consistent boast or just desperation?

Compare them on the forehand and the backhand - a lot of right-handed players are quite weak on the backhand. This could be an area you can exploit.

Do they watch the ball or only the front wall? - if they are not watching then they might be easily beaten by an unexpected cross-court.

Do they make lots of mistakes? If they do then things are looking good for you.

Have a look at the court - is it cold or hot? - does it make any strange noises when the ball hits certain places? These can be very distracting. Are there other things that might distract you? - through the glass-back for example - get yourself mentally prepared to ignore these.

And finally don't forget that you have 90 seconds at the end of the knock-up to get yourself ready to start. The match does not start straight away. You can carry on hitting the ball to keep it warm during this time. Or you can change out of your tracksuit, or grab a drink, or go for a pee.

Just make sure you are 100% focused for that first point.