July 9, 2009

The General Psychology of Tennis (Part 1)


By Gail Jones

Tennis psychology is only understanding the workings of your opponent's mind and assessing the effect of your own game on his/her head and also understanding the psychological effects resulting from the various 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 have to realize the effect on your game of the ensuing annoyance, pleasure, bewilderment, or whatever other form your reaction is. Does it increase your efficiency? If so, try for it, but never give it to your opponent. Does it deprive you of concentration? If so, either remove the reason, but if that isn't possible, strive to ignore it.

After you have properly measured your own reaction to circumstances, observe your opponents to decide their characters. Similar characters react in a like way, and you can judge people of your own sort by yourself. Opposite temperaments you have to seek to compare with those people, whose reactions you are already familiar with.

A person who can regulate his/her own mental processes has 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 rarely a keen 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 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 strategy of reaching the net.

However, then there is the other kind of baseline player, who would prefer to stay at the rear of the court while supervising an attack intending to disrupt up your game. He is a very dangerous player and a deep, keen thinking opponent. He achieves his/her results by mixing up his/her length and direction and worrying you with the variance of his/her game. This player is a very good psychologist.

The first type of tennis player mentioned above simply hits the ball without much idea of what he is really doing, while the latter always has a solid, thought-out plan and adheres to it.

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