Tennis psychology is only understanding the make-up of your opponent’s mind and assessing the effect of your own game on his/her mental viewpoint and also understanding the psychological effects resulting from the various 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 occurring under different conditions. This is because people react differently in different moods and under different conditions.
You must realize 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, try for it, but never offer it to your opponent. Does it deprive you of concentration? If so, either remove the cause, or if that is not possible, strive to ignore it.
Once you have correctly judged your own reaction to circumstances, observe your opponents in order to decide their characters. Like characters react similarly, and you may judge men of your own sort by yourself. Different characters you must seek to compare with those whose reactions you already know.
A person who can control his/her own mental processes stands an great chance of determining those of another for the minds works along definite lines of thought and can be studied. One may only regulate one’s own mental processes after examining them meticulously.
A steady, unemotional 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 fairly clear indicator of his/her sort of mind. The impassive, easy-going player, who normally displays the baseline strategy, does it because he does not want to activate up his/her torpid mind to think out a reliably safe method of reaching the net.
Then there is the other kind of baseline player, who would rather remain at the back of the court while directing an attack intending to break up your game. He is a much more dangerous player and a deep, keen 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 idea of what he is actually doing, while the latter always has a definite strategy and sticks to it.
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