there is certainly no rule to warm up. it is just a customary thing that people do. you are certainly allowed to just stand there and not receive any shots if you wish to. what your opponent is objecting is that they are used to people playing decent shots while warming up and they tend to use that to gauge opponent. where they failed is that they didn't realized people don't need to play their best during warming and they mistakenly relaxed their mental expectation. what they missed is that they should play as hard as they can regardless of how their opponent look. this is a tournament afterall and not some social game night.
At a higher level there are always practice courts available. Players will hit for up to an hour before they go near the match court and do specific physical warm ups possibly as well. Therefore the couple minutes on the match court is merely getting used to the match shuttle/lights/court, they are not trying to get their shots "going". At an amateur level you often get no chance to hit before the match is called, as such physical off court warm up is important and the actual knock up more important.
There's for sure nothing wrong with that. Just ignore the coach of your opponent.. That was just a smart move by you. You should be proud, men
@LD rules: There are people who dish out excuses, and there are also others who can't except that the earth is round and chickens do not fly. That's basically like blaming the best poker player for having a poker face. Anyway that coach knows very well there is nothing he can do to protest in anyway whatsoever, so he lashes out at you. All the best. But remember, you can't fool the same people all the time.
Thanks guys for your input. Firstly, I will point out that there were many practice courts available, the earlier you come the more time you have to warm up. I had 15 minutes on the practice court with my doubles partner, and I was good to go for my singles match. My opponent might not have had as much time on the practice courts, but that's not my problem, he should have turned up earlier... And anyway the problem seems to be more around me playing really lightly in the warm up and then going off and playing about 6 levels higher in the match, again not my fault, I was conserving energy, and also partly trying to reduce my chance of aggravating an injury before my match. Also I allowed my opponent to decide when he was finished "hitting up" so he was ready, can't be arguments that I wasn't fair on that front. People need to come up with better excuses...
I think the opponent is just bitter that they got suckered into the tactic. Seriously, isn't the one to be blame is the oppenent since he was over confident or belittling his opponent. If poor warmup is illegal or cheating, then Taufik should be stripped of all of his wins. He's known to be horrible during warmup, but amazing in game. I got a question, some people are so good at warming up that they actually look professional, but when game time comes. They SUCK! Would it be consider cheating that one can hit shots so well during warm up and suck during game? I mean if it's cheating one way, why wouldn't be the other?
