Saturday, September 12, 2009

The General Psychology of Tennis (Part 1)

By Gail Jones

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 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 happening 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 is. Does it increase your prowess? 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 accurately assessed your own reaction to circumstances, study your opponents in order to determine their characters. Similar characters react similarly, and you may judge men of your own sort by yourself. Other characters you must seek to compare with people whose reactions you know.

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

A steady, phlegmatic baseline player is seldom a quick thinker. If he were he would not adhere to the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is often a pretty clear indicator 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 torpid mind to think out a safe strategy of reaching the net.

However, then there is the other sort of baseline player, who would rather remain at the rear of the court while supervising an attack intending to break up your game. He is a very dangerous player and a deep, keen thinking opponent. He obtains 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 very good psychologist.

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

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