Basic Tennis Psychology (Part 1)
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 psychological 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 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 circumstances.
You must understand the effect on your game of the resulting irritation, pleasure, bewilderment, 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 accurately measured your own reaction to conditions, study your opponents in order to determine their temperaments. Similar characters react similarly, and you can judge men of your own type by yourself. Opposite temperaments you must seek to compare with people whose reactions you know.
Someone who can regulate his/her own mental processes stands an excellent chance of reading those of someone else for the mind works along definite lines of thought and can be studied. One can only control one’s own mental processes after carefully studying them.
A steady, phlegmatic baseline player is seldom a keen thinker. If he was he would not stay on the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is usually a pretty 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 slow mind to think out a safe method of getting to the net.
However, then there is the other sort of baseline player, who would rather remain on the rear of the court while supervising an attack intended to disrupt up your game. He is a very dangerous player and a deep, quick 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 very good psychologist.
The first kind of tennis player mentioned above merely strikes the ball without much idea of what he is really doing, while the latter always has a definite strategy and adheres to it.
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