Tennis psychology is only understanding the workings of your opponent’s mind and assessing the effect of your own game on his/her head and also understanding the mental effects resulting from the various 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 various circumstances. This is because people react differently in different moods and under different circumstances.
You have to realize the effect on your game of the ensuing irritation, joy, confusion, or whatever other form your reaction is. Does it improve your efficiency? If so, strive for it, but never offer it to your opponent. Does it rob you of concentration? If so, either remove the cause, but if that isn’t possible, strive to ignore it.
After you have properly judged your own reaction to circumstances, study your opponents to determine their characters. Similar temperaments react in a like way, and you may judge people of your own type by yourself. Other characters you must seek to liken with those people, whose reactions you are already familiar with.
A person who can regulate his/her own mental processes stands an excellent chance of determining those of someone else for the minds works along definite lines of thought and can be examined. One may only regulate one’s own thought processes after examining them meticulously.
A steady, phlegmatic baseline player is seldom a quick thinker. If he were he would not stay on the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is often a fairly clear indicator of his/her kind of mind. The stolid, easy-going player, who usually advocates the baseline game, does so because he hates to stir up his/her torpid mind to work out a safe strategy of reaching the net.
Then there is the other kind of baseline player, who would rather stay on the back of the court while directing an attack intending to disrupt up your game. He is a much more dangerous player and a deep, keen thinking opponent. He obtains his/her results by mixing up his/her length and direction and worrying you with the variance of his/her game. This player is a good psychologist.
The first sort of tennis player mentioned above simply hits the ball without much idea of what he is really doing, while the latter always has a solid, thought-out strategy and adheres to it.
If you are fascinated by the psychology of tennis, you should take a look at our website called Tennis Tips for Beginners This article, Tennis Psychology (Part 1) is released under a creative commons attribution licence.
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