Tennis psychology is nothing more than understanding the workings of your opponent’s mind, and gauging 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 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 various circumstances. This is because people react differently in different moods and under different circumstances.

You must understand the effect on your game of the resulting annoyance, joy, bewilderment, or whatever other form your reaction is. Does it improve your efficiency? If so, go for it, but never give it to your opponent. Does it rob you of concentration? If so, either remove the cause, or if that is not possible, strive to ignore it.

Once you have accurately measured your own reaction to conditions, study your opponents in order to decide their temperaments. Similar temperaments 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 regulate his/her own mental processes has an excellent chance of reading those of another for the minds works along definite lines of thought and can be examined. One may only control one’s own thought processes after studying them meticulously.

A steady, phlegmatic baseline player is seldom a keen thinker. If he was he would not stay on the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is usually 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 method 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 disrupt 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 tennis player mentioned above merely hits the ball without much thought about what he is really up to, while the latter always has a solid, thought-out plan and sticks to it.

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