THG Formulations

Tennis psychology is the same as understanding the workings of your opponent’s mind and assessing the effect of your own strategy on his/her mental viewpoint and also understanding the psychological 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 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 prowess? If so, go for it, but never give it to your opponent. Does it rob you of concentration? If so, either remove the reason, but if that isn’t possible, strive to ignore it.

After you have properly measured your own reaction to circumstances, observe your opponents to determine their temperaments. Like temperaments react in a like way, and you may judge people of your own type by yourself. Other temperaments you must seek to compare with those people, whose reactions you are already familiar with.

A person who can control his/her own mental processes has an great chance of reading those of another for the mind works along certain lines of thought and can be studied. One can only control one’s own mental processes after carefully examining them.

The steady, unemotional baseline player is seldom a keen thinker. If he were, he would not adhere to the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is often a fairly clear indicator of his/her kind of mind. The stolid, easy-going player, who normally displays 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.

Then there is the other kind of baseline player, who would prefer to 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 sort of tennis player mentioned above just hits the ball without much idea of what he is actually up to, while the latter always has a solid, thought-out plan and sticks to it.

If you are into the psychology of tennis, you ought to go to our website entitled Tennis Tips for Beginners Free reprint avaialable from: Tennis Psychology (Part 1).