Friday, September 18, 2009

Tennis Psychology (Part 1)

By Gail Jones

Tennis psychology is the same as understanding the make-up of your opponent's mind and gauging the effect of your own strategy on his/her head and also understanding the mental 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 you 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 takes. Does it increase your efficiency? 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, strive to ignore it.

Once you have accurately assessed your own reaction to circumstances, study your opponents in order to decide their temperaments. Similar characters react similarly, and you may judge men of your own kind by yourself. Other characters you must seek to compare with people whose reactions you know.

Someone who can regulate his/her own psychology stands an excellent chance of determining those of another for the minds works along definite lines of thought and can be examined. One can only control one's own mental processes after examining them very carefully .

The regular, unemotional 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 pretty clear indication of his/her type of mind. The impassive, easy-going player, who usually advocates the baseline strategy, does so because he hates to stir up his/her slow mind to work out a safe method of reaching 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 break up your game. He is a very 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. This player is a good psychologist.

The first type of player mentioned above just hits 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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