Tennis 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 psychological effects resulting from the various external causes on your own head.

However, it is also true that you no one can be a successful psychologist of others without first understanding his own psychology. Therefore, you must study the effect on yourself of the same thing occurring under various circumstances. This is because people react differently in different moods and under different circumstances.

You must understand the effect on your game of the resulting irritation, pleasure, confusion, or whatever other form your reaction is. Does it increase your prowess? If so, try for it, but never give it to your opponent. Does it deprive you of concentration? If so, either remove the reason, or if that is not possible, strive to ignore it.

Once you have accurately assessed your own reaction to conditions, study your opponents in order to determine their temperaments. Similar temperaments react similarly, and you may judge men of your own sort by yourself. Opposite temperaments you must seek to compare with people whose reactions you know.

Someone who can regulate his/her own mental processes stands an excellent 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 keen thinker. If he were he would not adhere to the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is usually a fairly clear indication 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 slow mind to work out a safe method of getting to the net.

Then there is the other kind of baseline player, who would rather remain on 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 obtains his/her results by changing his/her length and direction and worrying you with the variance of his/her game. This player is a good psychologist.

The first type of player mentioned above merely hits the ball with little thought about what he is actually doing, while the latter always has a definite strategy and adheres to it.

If you are into the psychology of tennis, you ought to take a look at our website entitled Tennis Tips for Beginners