By "knowing you'll miss", that's probably just a really hard to hit shot. It would probably benefit you to try hit it.
But it sounds like what's limiting you is your fear of getting destroyed by better players, so you might gimp your practice and play worse players. Just remind yourself it's a practice mod, and play the "good players" on a private server with no score limit. This shouldn't be a problem in DM, which I'd recommend over mge.