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Basic Tennis Psychology (Part 1)

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 mental viewpoint and also understanding the psychological effects resulting from the different 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 happening under different conditions. This is because you react differently in different moods and under different circumstances.

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 efficiency? If so, go for it, but never give it to your opponent. Does it rob you of concentration? If so, either remove the cause, or if that is not possible, try to ignore it.

Once you have correctly judged your own reaction to conditions, study your opponents in order to decide their temperaments. Like temperaments react similarly, and you can judge men of your own type by yourself. Other characters you must try to liken with people whose reactions you already know.

Someone who can regulate his/her own mental processes runs an great chance of reading those of another for the minds works along certain lines of thought and can be examined. One can only control one’s own thought processes after studying them very carefully .

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 fairly clear indicator of his/her type 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 work out a safe method of getting to the net.

Then there is the other sort of baseline player, who would prefer to remain at the back of the court while directing an attack intended to break up your game. He is a very dangerous player and a deep, quick thinking opponent. He gets his/her results by mixing up his/her length and direction and worrying you with the variety of his/her game. This player is a good psychologist.

The first sort of tennis player mentioned above merely hits the ball without much idea of what he is actually up to, while the latter always has a solid, thought-out plan and sticks to it.

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