Very interesting comments on this thread.

The difficulty whenever your partner is having an off day or they are unable to compete tactically at your level is that you lose focus. When you're demoralised or angry you fail to compete on your terms. This means you're as susceptible to mistakes as your partner.

Using the phrase “we need to make less mistakes” is almost counter-productive. You would do better to reconsider the use of this phrase and replace it with something more positive like “we need to keep the shuttle in play at all times.”

When professional players are having an off day and their opponents are too far ahead in a game, what do they do? They keep the shuttle in play. Why? Simply to find a way of steadying the ship and to build for the following game. The focus has now changed and so has the pattern of the game. No longer are they fighting to win the point early. Instead they re-think, find their length and stop taking risks.

The problem when you lose focus is that key elements of your game slip, which in turn gifts more easy points to your opponents.

As many players will testify, whenever I go on court, regardless who I am playing against, the net is mine. It's always been mine, will remain mine throughout the game and I accept occasionally my opponent will play an outstanding shot which may result in a point – although rarely when I am at the net. This is not an arrogant viewpoint, it is one i have developed and will not allow to be dented in any way at any time.

Because of this, I always have a point from which to build. So, virtually every other point I will be facing a serve or will be serving. Therefore I have the opportunity to impose my will and tactics at that stage in the game. If I allow the whole game situation to effect my mindset, I am losing the one advantage I carry onto court all the time.

Everything that happens around the net, in my domain, allows me to to set up a chance for my partner. I must therefore focus on doing what I must to create tactical advantage. Even if my partner is unable to put the shuttle away, I can be happy with my contribution to the game. By staying alert I may find that my best shots provide necessary relief for us both and allow me to almost sneak a few winners by taking the sitters mid court.

If I overstretch myself by trying to get in on every point when the shot is clearly my partners, I run the risk of being completely out of position and therefore create more openings for my opponents and making myself look as bad as my partner. My job is therefore to continually encourage and create the tactics which bring me into the game as often as allowed by the opposition or my return.

I always teach that the net area in the final frontier in terms of tactical advantage. Master this and you are always in with a chance of picking up cheap points. The other area is a cast-iron serve. How often do we hear from professional players being interviewed that they comment on the importance of serving well and dominating the net – point made.

I read with interest the debate over talent. History is full of talented individuals in sport who made it. They had that something extra that cannot be coached. To use football as an example, coaches will tell you that what George Best was able to do in his heyday was virtually uncoachable. He had that something extra. At the other end of the scale there are players I have been asked to coach that had no mechanical fluency whatsoever. Players like them, no matter how many hours spent on court, would never make the grade.

There is always a middle ground where there is a combination of ability mixed with application. I have worked with talented kids with no application and those not so talented in terms of natural ability but they were prepared to work and get it right. Occasionally I could sum up these people in the way they practiced…

One player would practice until they got it right.

The other would practice until they couldn't get it wrong.

When you think about these two phrases you can see they are worlds apart. This is what I believe creates some of the greatest sporting legends in past, present and future. This dogged determination and total commitment to strive for perfection and they will do it regardless of circumstances.

I remember the story about Michael Jordan as a youngster when he was small. He came home one day in tears. When his mother asked why he was crying he said the other boys wouldn't allow him to play basketball because he was too small for the game.

She took him to one side and said that it wasn't the size of him in the game that mattered but the size of the game inside him.

That conversation was one of the biggest, if not THE biggest turning points in his life. This inspired him to practice and the rest they say is history.

So, I am a believer in talent but there is talent on so many levels. In some activities you can overcome by the quality of practice with the right mindset. In others you can't.

Practice has to be of the highest quality. I've heard time and again players saying that practice makes perfect. This argument is flawed. If I was learnig golf and did not practice to get every element of my swing correct, then all I am doing is grooving a bad swing. Whilst I will hit the ball more consistently, I will not be able to hit the ball perfectly.

The phrase should be “perfect practice makes perfect.” This means breaking down each element in the sequence and rebuilding until the technique is perfect. This is something we strive for at Lilleshall although there isn't the time to go into too much detail on every subject and correct everything. We therefore still take the same approach, although fix the biggest weaknesses in each players technique. So we manage to complete the first stage in this multi-stage process of creating the perfect technique. That's why some players return so that we can build on the early work and help them reduce errors further by focussing on other pieces in the puzzle that remain an issue.

Of course, all of this is subjective but I think history constantly reminds us that out of the ordinary, occasionally somebody rises to the top and becomes extraordinary. Was it talent that got them there? Partly, and the rest was mindset, outside help and maybe a touch of destiny.

Paul