If I get nervouse/tense in a game my serve goes to pieces. Any suggestions on how can I overcome this?
If you are using a long serv - maybee try to make it more safe by avoiding the lines. And it sees to me that a bad short serv is worse than a long one - even in doubles!
The best recipe is of course to improve your serve. If you know you have a solid short serve, you'll feel confident in the serving situation and you will get less nervous. Overcoming nervousness is hard! After getting ready to serve, you have about 5 seconds deliver the actual shot. This is actually quite a long time. Take your time. A slow (but legally slow) server will stress the opponent.
My suggestion would be that during your practice games you concentrate to so that your serve to fall in one location (i.e. for double close to the T line) and serve often to this location so that it becomes a second nature. Now when you get nervous try concentrating to serve on this location. And when you're relaxe you can start varying your serve location. Normand
What I do is to take a deep breath. I also count to 3 and then serves. In fact, it is a good rule of thumb to count to 3 (to yourself of course ;-) when serving. This gives you sense of timing which I find very usefull at all times, not just when you are nervous. Hope this helps.
What I used to do, is when I'm not playing and there is a court available, I'll take a shuttle, and start practicing my serves. I do it so often that if I'm using the proper shuttle that I normally use, I can send the shuttle right to the far back line most of the time. This gives me more confidence in my serves. The only time I stuff up if I don't concentrate during my serves. But as my coached said, if you have the serve, take your time and serve. Nothing is more annoying than giving up chances for your opponent to score by making a bad serve, and I believe that this could make you more nervous and stressed out in the long run too. So take your time, recover your breath, calm yourself and concentrate before you serve.
Practise makes perfect. Any other shot you can make up for but if you cannot serve you will not get any points. Take a tube of shuttles and hit a thousand short serves to the T. It is after all where you should be serving. Something to bear in mind is that the more moving parts an action has the more there is to go wrong. If you have an agricultural action a slight mistake at any point means disaster. For a short serve try just using the wrist or the elbow to move the racket.
Sound advice. This is what I used to do. Then I examined little variations of technique and trying to see how it would affect shuttle flight and consistency of the serve. If you think the technique is pretty OK and have trouble doing short serves in doubles, concentrate on the net first and don't look at the opponent until after the shuttle leaves your hand. Big serving sctions are more difficult to control than small serving actions (personal experience). You might want to examine your technique again.
What I do is relax and take a breath. My partners always tell me to take my time so I do and my serves end up in the right place.
I really enjoyed everyone's approach in eliminating nervousness. There is the conditioning approach by practicing, the physiological approach by deep breathing, and the psychoanalytical approach by making serving your 2nd nature. All that is missing from this party of psychologists is the cognitive approach, which is to examine why you are nervous in the first place. Is it because you are afraid of being smashed by a little birdie if your serve sails high? Or you are afraid of bending over to pick up the shuttle if you hit the net? Seriously, there's nothing to be nervous about. Missing a serve is not the end of the world, in fact, landing a good serve is not the end of the world also. Ask yourself this question, does my missing a serve violates anyone's rights? Does it make you morally insignificant? The answer, if you do not already know, is NO! So there you go. Once you realized the fact that serving, either being good or bad at it, does not alter the outcome of this world, the nervousness should go away!