This is definitely something you are going to have to understand and deal with. The answers so far are all pretty solid ones.
One thing to know is that, match play development, at the stage you are at, probably needs to happen side by side with the kind of stroke development training that Dan refers to as "block" training in his article.
So the training you are getting from coaching is very worthwhile and valuable for you. But it will actually, probably be a while before you can implement it fully in the kind of random scenario that happens in a match.
In the type of training drills that you are doing when being coached, most of the time the coach is giving you high quality balls with very consistent spin and you pretty much know where the ball will go. It may be faster than a lot of the balls that get hit in a match. It may have more spin. But you know where the ball is going next. At your level, in my opinion, you still need this kind of work to develop your strokes, your contact, your touch and your feeling for the ball.
At the same time though, you can still be working on drills that help you convert more of the technique you are learning in the lessons and off the robot into game skills.
In a game, your opponent is trying to hit the ball in a way that will give you trouble like away from you, at your switching point, with a spin that will make you mess up, etc. so the circumstances are almost the exact opposite of what a coach might be doing with you to get your strokes to improve.
But you can do serve and receive drills with a friend who is at about your level and it will help your game skills increase decently and in different ways than coaching will improve your game.
Here are a few examples of serve and receive drills that may be helpful to you developing better game skills.
1) This one is as simple as it gets. Each player serves two like in a game and you just play the points exactly as if it was a game but you don't count so you can go for the shots you shoul,d since, even if you mess up, you won't lose a point. It is beneficial to count missed serves as lets so that both players get to receive two serves and so that, as the server, you can try harder serves without worrying about what happens if you miss.
2) Server serves short backspin to the center of the table. Receiver pushes long. Serve tries to loop the long push.
This one can be made easier or harder. When I do this one, I have the receiver try and push anywhere and mess me up with placement like wide FH or wide BH. But you could start simple like the push goes to the middle or FH and make it harder as you get better at it. Once the the topspin is opened then both players try to win the point.
This drill works better if each player serves for about 10-20 minutes straight and then you switch who serves so you can really groove the consistency of looping the third ball.
3) Server serves short backspin, receiver pushes short, server pushes long, receiver loops 4th ball.
This one could also have a standard place for where the long push goes or the placement can be randomized as the loop against backspin becomes more consistent.
Once the 4th ball is looped play is open.
There are many more of these kinds of serve and receive drills. But I think those three are a good start.
At some point you move on to flip training. But at this point, probably the biggest issues for you in match play are:
1) the opponent is trying to win the point. This means you have to read and adjust to whatever he does.
2) your opponent is trying to hit to one spot and the ball goes somewhere else and you see the mishit a bit too late.
3) the opponent's contact is flat and/or inconsistent and you think the ball has top but it is dead so it goes into the net or you think it is dead and it has more top than you realize and the ball flies long.
By practicing drills that have randomization built into them these weird, low quality shots will happen plenty and then you will get practice responding to them in a situation where you don't have to be stressed out by losing a point or a match because your opponent hit a shot that hit his thumb and should have gone out but ended up being a winner.
So add some serve and receive drills into your training regimen. They will help you improve on reading and responding to those weird and frustrating situations.
But keep up with the training you are doing with your coach as well. Because he is helping you develop better stroke technique, contact, feeling and touch that will help your level go up in a different way than what I am talking about.
For the level you are at, stroke improvement still needs to be done. But you also need to add in more random elements to your training.
Gosh that's long. Hope the info is helpful.
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