Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Basic Tennis Psychology (Part 1)

By Gail Jones

Tennis psychology is nothing more than understanding the workings 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 different external causes on your own mind.

However, it is also true that you no one can be a successful psychologist of others without first understanding his own mental processes. Therefore, you must study the effect on yourself of the same thing happening under different circumstances. This is because you react differently in different moods and under different circumstances.

You have to realize the effect on your game of the ensuing irritation, joy, confusion, or whatever other form your reaction is. 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 reason, but if that isn't possible, try to ignore it.

Once you have accurately measured your own reaction to circumstances, observe your opponents in order to decide their temperaments. Similar characters react similarly, and you can judge men of your own type by yourself. Opposite temperaments you must seek to compare with people whose reactions you know.

Someone who can regulate his/her own mental processes runs an great chance of determining those of someone else for the minds works along definite lines of thought and can be studied. One can only regulate one's own mental processes after examining them very carefully .

The regular, unemotional baseline player is seldom a keen thinker. If he were, he would not stay on the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is usually a fairly 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 activate up his/her slow mind to work out a safe strategy of getting to the net.

Then there is the other kind of baseline player, who would prefer to stay on the back of the court while directing an attack intending to disrupt up your game. He is a much more dangerous player and a deep, keen thinking opponent. He gets 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 tennis player mentioned above merely hits the ball without much idea of what he is really doing, while the latter always has a definite plan and adheres to it.

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