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

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 people react differently in different moods and under different conditions.

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 efficiency? If so, strive 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 accurately assessed your own reaction to conditions, study your opponents in order to determine their temperaments. Like characters 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.

A person who can control his/her own mental processes runs an great chance of reading 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, phlegmatic baseline player is rarely a keen thinker. If he was he would not stay on the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is usually a fairly 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 torpid mind to think out a safe strategy of reaching the net.

Then there is the other sort of baseline player, who would rather remain on 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 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 type of player mentioned above just strikes 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 interested in the psychology of tennis, you should go to our website entitled Tennis Tips for Beginners

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