Tennis Psychology (Part 1)

Posted by | Posted on 1:10 AM

By Gail Jones

Tennis psychology is nothing more than understanding the workings of your opponent's mind and gauging the effect of your own strategy on his/her mental viewpoint and also understanding the psychological effects resulting from the various external causes on your own head.

Nevertheless, it is also true that you no one can be a successful psychologist of others without first understanding his own psychology. So, you have to study the effect on yourself of the same thing occurring under different conditions. This is because people react differently in different moods and under different circumstances.

You have to understand the effect on your game of the ensuing irritation, joy, confusion, or whatever other form your reaction is. Does it increase your efficiency? If so, go 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, strive to ignore it.

After you have properly judged your own reaction to circumstances, observe your opponents to determine their characters. Similar characters react in a like manner, and you may judge people of your own type by yourself. Opposite temperaments you have to try to liken with those people, whose reactions you are already familiar with.

A person who can control his/her own mental processes runs an excellent chance of determining those of another for the minds works along definite lines of thought and can be examined. One may only control one's own mental processes after studying them meticulously.

The regular, unemotional baseline player is rarely a keen 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 remain on the back of the court while directing an attack intended to disrupt 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 variance of his/her game. He is a good psychologist.

The first kind of tennis player mentioned above merely strikes the ball without much thought about what he is really doing, while the latter always has a definite strategy and adheres to it.

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