Basic Tennis Psychology (Part 1)

Tennis psychology is the same as understanding the workings of your opponent’s mind and assessing the effect of your own strategy on his/her head and also understanding the mental effects resulting from the various external causes on your own head.

However, it is true that you cannot be a successful psychologist of others without first understanding your own mental processes. Therefore, you must study the effect on yourself of the same thing happening under different 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, joy, bewilderment, or whatever other form your reaction takes. Does it increase your efficiency? If so, try 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, try to ignore it.

Once you have correctly measured your own reaction to conditions, study your opponents in order to determine their temperaments. Like characters react similarly, and you can judge men of your own type by yourself. Different characters you have to seek to compare with those whose reactions you already know.

Someone who can control his/her own mental processes has an excellent chance of reading those of someone else for the mind works along certain lines of thought and can be studied. One can only control one’s own mental processes after carefully studying 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 work out a safe strategy of getting to the net.

Then there is the other type of baseline player, who would prefer to 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 variance of his/her game. He is a good psychologist.

The first kind of tennis player mentioned above just strikes the ball without much idea of what he is really up to, while the latter always has a solid, thought-out plan and adheres to it.

If you are into the psychology of tennis, you should take a look at our website entitled Tennis Tips for Beginners This and other unique content ” articles are available with free reprint rights.