Basic Tennis Psychology (Part 1)
Tennis psychology is only understanding the make-up of your opponent’s mind and gauging the effect of your own strategy on his/her head and also understanding the psychological 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 psychology. Therefore, you must study the effect on yourself of the same thing occurring under different circumstances. This is because people react differently in different moods and under different circumstances.
You must understand the effect on your game of the resulting annoyance, pleasure, confusion, or whatever other form your reaction is. Does it improve your prowess? If so, go for it, but never offer it to your opponent. Does it rob you of concentration? If so, either remove the reason, or if that is not possible, try to ignore it.
Once you have correctly judged your own reaction to circumstances, study your opponents in order to decide their temperaments. Similar characters react similarly, and you may judge men of your own sort by yourself. Opposite characters you have to try to compare with people whose reactions you already know.
A person who can regulate his/her own psychology runs an great chance of determining those of someone else for the minds works along definite lines of thought and can be examined. One can only control one’s own thought processes after studying them very carefully .
A steady, phlegmatic 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 sort of mind. The stolid, easy-going player, who usually advocates the baseline game, does so because he hates to stir up his/her slow mind to work out a safe strategy of getting to the net.
Then there is the other kind of baseline player, who would prefer to remain on the back of the court while directing an attack intended 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 type of player mentioned above merely hits the ball with little idea of what he is actually doing, while the latter always has a definite strategy and adheres to it.
