May 31st, 2010Tennis Psychology (Part 1)
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 mental viewpoint and also understanding the mental 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 occurring under different conditions. This is because you react differently in different moods and under different conditions.
You must understand the effect on your game of the resulting irritation, pleasure, confusion, or whatever other form your reaction takes. Does it increase your prowess? If so, strive for it, but never offer 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.
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. Different characters you must seek to compare with people whose reactions you know.
A person who can regulate his/her own mental processes stands an great chance of reading those of another for the mind works along certain lines of thought and can be examined. One can only control one’s own mental processes after carefully examining them.
A steady, phlegmatic baseline player is seldom 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 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 getting to the net.
Then there is the other sort of baseline player, who would prefer to stay at the back of the court while directing an attack intended to disrupt up your game. He is a much more 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 variety of his/her game. This player is a good psychologist.
The first type of tennis player mentioned above merely strikes the ball without much thought about what he is actually doing, while the latter always has a definite plan and sticks to it.
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