Tennis Psychology (Part 1)
Tennis psychology is the same as understanding the workings of your opponent's mind, and assessing the effect of your own game on his/her mental vie...
Tennis psychology is the same as understanding the workings of your opponent’s mind, and assessing the effect of your own game on his/her mental viewpoint 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 various circumstances. This is because you react differently in different moods and under different conditions.
You must realize the effect on your game of the resulting irritation, pleasure, confusion, or whatever other form your reaction takes. Does it increase your prowess? If so, try for it, but never offer it to your opponent. Does it deprive you of concentration? If so, either remove the reason, or if that is not possible, strive to ignore it.
Once you have accurately judged your own reaction to circumstances, study your opponents in order to decide their characters. Similar temperaments react similarly, and you can judge men of your own type by yourself. Opposite characters you must seek to compare with people whose reactions you know.
Someone who can regulate his/her own mental processes has an great chance of reading those of someone else for the mind works along certain lines of thought and can be examined. One can only control one’s own mental processes after carefully examining them.
A steady, phlegmatic baseline player is rarely a quick thinker. If he was he would not stay on 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 game, does so because he hates to stir up his/her torpid mind to think out a safe method of getting to the net.
However, then there is the other type of baseline player, who would prefer to stay 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, keen thinking opponent. He gets 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 type of player mentioned above merely strikes the ball with little thought about what he is actually doing, while the latter always has a definite strategy and sticks to it.
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