It’s been my experience that too many players expect to be able to improve through osmosis and somehow make a great change in their play all at once.  The truth is, in most cases it is a number of small particulars that need to be addressed and the execution needs to be specific and repeatable.  Execution is tremendously dependent on the small fundamentals, not one big change. 

I think of a stroke as being composed of a large number of parts.  In my mind I peg the number arbitrarily at 100 parts.  Some parts are more important than other parts, but in general someone who regularly executes 75 of those parts in each hit will play better than someone who regularly executes 65 parts on average.  One problem we have in practicing is that we look at the result and try to figure out what we did to get that result rather than trying to perfect one part of our stroke at a time.

Though the explanation above refers to strokes, it also applies to movement, attitude, conditioning and strategy.  For instance when I first became serious about my game (in my mid 20s) I regularly hit my backhand with my front foot further toward the sideline (closed) than my back foot even when I had plenty of time to hit with my feet lined up with the court.  While my backhand was good, I knew it could be better if my weight went forward instead of sideways.  Without using a ball I put a mark on the court just behind the baseline about ¾ of the way to the sideline and practiced running to that spot and putting my back foot on the mark, then stepping forward not sideways with my front foot and swinging my racquet.  I did this for about ½ hour for 3 days and found that I now would naturally step forward when I played.  While some habits (volleys for me) seem to continually need to be honed, I have never had to go back to work on this specific point.

If you are truly serious about improving and I assume that since you all play serious matches that you are serious about improving, remember that improvement comes from a number of small things not some huge immediate revelation and that the execution of small things adds up and will make you better.  Don’t trust getting better to happenstance, have a plan for improving.