The General Psychology Of Tennis (Part 1)
Tennis psychology is nothing more than understanding the workings of your opponent's mind, and assessing the effect of your own game on his/her head and also understanding the psychological effects resulting from the different 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 you react differently in different moods and under different circumstances.
You have to understand the effect on your game of the resulting annoyance, joy, bewilderment, or whatever other form your reaction is. Does it increase your prowess? If so, go for it, but never give it to your opponent. Does it rob you of concentration? If so, either remove the reason, but if that isn't possible, try to ignore it.
Once you have correctly assessed your own reaction to circumstances, observe your opponents in order to determine their characters. Similar temperaments react similarly, and you can judge men of your own sort by yourself. Opposite characters you must try to compare with people whose reactions you already know.
A person who can regulate his/her own mental processes has 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 studying them very carefully .
A steady, phlegmatic baseline player is seldom a keen thinker. If he were he would not adhere to the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is often a fairly 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 torpid mind to work out a safe method of getting to the net.
However, then there is the other kind of baseline player, who would rather 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, quick thinking antagonist. He achieves his/her results by changing 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 just hits the ball with little idea of what he is actually doing, while the latter always has a definite plan and adheres to it.
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