Tennis psychology is the same as understanding the workings 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 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 mental processes. So, you have to study the effect on yourself of the same thing occurring under various conditions. This is because you react differently in different moods and under different conditions.
You have to understand the effect on your game of the resulting irritation, joy, bewilderment, or whatever other form your reaction is. Does it improve your prowess? If so, strive for it, but never offer 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.
Once you have accurately measured your own reaction to circumstances, observe your opponents in order to determine their characters. Similar characters react similarly, and you may judge men of your own type by yourself. Opposite temperaments you must seek to compare with people whose reactions you know.
A person who can control his/her own mental processes stands an great chance of reading those of someone else for the mind works along certain 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 rarely a quick thinker. If he was he would not adhere to the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is often a pretty clear indicator 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 think out a safe strategy of reaching the net.
Then there is the other sort of baseline player, who would rather remain 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 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 simply 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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