Saturday, September 12, 2009

Basic Tennis Psychology (Part 1)

By Gail Jones

Tennis psychology is the same as understanding the make-up 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 different 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 mental processes. So, you have to study the effect on yourself of the same thing happening under different conditions. 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 takes. Does it increase your prowess? If so, go for it, but never offer it to your opponent. Does it rob you of concentration? If so, either remove the cause, or if that is not possible, strive to ignore it.

Once you have correctly measured your own reaction to circumstances, observe your opponents in order to determine their characters. Similar temperaments react similarly, and you may judge men of your own type by yourself. Different temperaments you have to try to compare with people whose reactions you already know.

Someone who can regulate his/her own psychology stands an excellent chance of reading those of someone else for the minds works along definite lines of thought and can be examined. One can only control one's own thought processes after studying them very carefully .

The regular, unemotional baseline player is rarely a quick thinker. If he were, he would not adhere to the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is usually a fairly clear indicator of his/her type of mind. The impassive, easy-going player, who usually advocates the baseline game, does so because he hates to activate up his/her torpid mind to think out a safe method of reaching the net.

Then there is the other sort 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 sort of tennis player mentioned above just strikes the ball without much idea of what he is actually up to, while the latter always has a solid, thought-out strategy and sticks to it.

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