Tennis Psychology (Part 1)

Tennis psychology is the same as understanding the make-up of your opponent’s mind and assessing the effect of your own game on his/her mental viewpoint and also understanding the mental effects resulting from the different external causes on your own mind.

However, it is also true that you no one can be a successful psychologist of others without first understanding his own mental processes. Therefore, you must study the effect on yourself of the same thing occurring under various circumstances. This is because people react differently in different moods and under different conditions.

You have to realize the effect on your game of the ensuing annoyance, pleasure, confusion, or whatever other form your reaction takes. Does it improve your efficiency? If so, try for it, but never give it to your opponent. Does it deprive you of concentration? If so, either remove the cause, but if that isn’t possible, try to ignore it.

After you have properly measured your own reaction to circumstances, study your opponents to decide their characters. Like temperaments react in a like way, and you can judge people of your own kind by yourself. Different characters you have to try to compare with those people, whose reactions you are already familiar with.

A person who can regulate his/her own mental processes has an excellent chance of reading those of another for the minds works along definite lines of thought and can be examined. One can only regulate one’s own thought processes after examining them very carefully .

The regular, unemotional baseline player is rarely a quick thinker. If he were, he would not adhere to the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is often a pretty clear indication of his/her kind of mind. The stolid, easy-going player, who usually advocates the baseline strategy, does so because he hates to stir up his/her slow mind to work out a safe strategy of reaching the net.

Then there is the other kind of baseline player, who would rather remain on the back of the court while directing an attack intending to break up your game. He is a very dangerous player, and a deep, keen thinking antagonist. He achieves his/her results by mixing up his/her length and direction and worrying you with the variety of his/her game. He is a good psychologist.

The first sort of tennis player mentioned above merely hits the ball without much idea of what he is actually up to, while the latter always has a definite strategy and sticks to it.