Tennis psychology is the same as understanding the workings of your opponent’s mind and gauging the effect of your own game on his/her mental viewpoint and also understanding the psychological effects resulting from the various external causes on your own mind.
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 happening under different conditions. This is because people react differently in different moods and under different conditions.
You must realize the effect on your game of the ensuing irritation, pleasure, confusion, or whatever other form your reaction is. Does it improve your prowess? If so, strive for it, but never give it to your opponent. Does it rob you of concentration? If so, either remove the reason, or if that is not possible, strive to ignore it.
After you have properly judged your own reaction to circumstances, observe your opponents to determine their temperaments. Similar characters react in a like manner, and you can judge people of your own sort by yourself. Different temperaments you must seek to liken with those people, whose reactions you are already familiar with.
A person who can control his/her own mental processes has an great chance of reading those of another for the mind works along definite lines of thought and can be examined. One can only control one’s own mental processes after carefully studying them.
The regular, unemotional baseline player is rarely a quick thinker. If he were, 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 impassive, easy-going player, who normally displays the baseline game, does it because he does not want to stir up his/her torpid mind to work out a reliably safe strategy of reaching the net.
However, then there is the other sort of baseline player, who would prefer to remain at the rear of the court while supervising an attack intending to disrupt up your game. He is a very dangerous player and a deep, keen thinking antagonist. 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 sort of tennis player mentioned above just hits the ball without much thought about what he is really doing, while the latter always has a definite plan and adheres to it.
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