Tennis psychology is nothing more than understanding the make-up of your opponent’s mind and gauging the effect of your own strategy on his/her head and also understanding the mental 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 mental processes. Therefore, you must study the effect on yourself of the same thing happening 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 is. Does it increase 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 reason, or if that is not possible, strive to ignore it.
Once you have correctly assessed your own reaction to conditions, observe your opponents in order to decide their characters. Like temperaments 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 already know.
A person who can control his/her own mental processes stands an great chance of reading those of someone else for the minds works along certain lines of thought and can be examined. One can only control one’s own mental processes after examining them very carefully .
A regular, unemotional baseline player is rarely a keen thinker. If he was, he would not stay on the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is usually a fairly clear indication of his/her kind of mind. The stolid, easy-going player, who normally displays the baseline strategy, does it because he does not want to activate up his/her slow mind to think out a reliably safe strategy of getting to the net.
Then there is the other type 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 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 variety of his/her game. He is a good psychologist.
The first type of tennis player mentioned above simply strikes the ball without much idea of what he is actually up to, while the latter always has a definite strategy and sticks to it.
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