Basic Tennis Psychology (Part 1)

April 14th, 2010 by Gail Jones Leave a reply »

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 head.

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 people react differently in different moods and under different circumstances.

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, strive for it, but never give it to your opponent. Does it deprive you of concentration? If so, either remove the reason, or if that is not possible, try to ignore it.

After you have properly assessed your own reaction to circumstances, observe your opponents to decide their temperaments. Similar characters react in a like manner, and you can judge people of your own type by yourself. Different temperaments you must try 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 definite lines of thought and can be examined. One can only control one’s own mental processes after carefully studying them.

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 kind of mind. The stolid, easy-going player, who normally advocates the baseline game, does it because he does not want to activate up his/her torpid mind to think out a reliably safe method of reaching the net.

However, then there is the other type of baseline player, who would rather stay at the rear of the court while supervising an attack intending to disrupt up your game. He is a much more dangerous player and a deep, quick thinking antagonist. 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 kind of tennis player mentioned above merely strikes the ball without much thought about what he is actually up to, while the latter always has a solid, thought-out strategy and sticks to it.

If you are into the psychology of tennis, you ought to visit our website entitled Tennis Tips for Beginners Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

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