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 mental effects resulting from the various external causes on your own mind.

Nevertheless, it is also true that you no one can be a successful psychologist of others without first understanding his own mental processes. So, you have to study the effect on yourself of the same thing occurring under different conditions. This is because people react differently in different moods and under different circumstances.

You must understand 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, strive 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, try to ignore it.

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

Someone who can regulate his/her own mental processes runs 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 studying them.

The regular, unemotional baseline player is seldom a quick thinker. If he was, he would not adhere to the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is usually a fairly clear indication of his/her type of mind. The impassive, 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 strategy of reaching the net.

However, then there is the other sort of baseline player, who would rather remain at the rear of the court while supervising an attack intending to break up your game. He is a very dangerous player and a deep, quick thinking antagonist. He achieves 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 just hits the ball without much thought about what he is really doing, while the latter always has a definite plan and adheres to it.

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