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Tennis psychology is only 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 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 annoyance, pleasure, confusion, or whatever other form your reaction takes. Does it increase your prowess? If so, go for it, but never offer 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 assessed your own reaction to circumstances, observe your opponents to determine their temperaments. Similar temperaments react in a like way, and you may judge people of your own kind by yourself. Different temperaments you have to try to compare with those people, whose reactions you are already familiar with.

A person who can control his/her own psychology stands an great chance of reading those of someone else for the minds works along definite lines of thought and can be examined. One can only regulate one’s own thought processes after studying them very carefully .

A steady, phlegmatic baseline player is rarely a quick thinker. If he were 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 stolid, easy-going player, who usually advocates the baseline game, does so because he hates to stir up his/her slow mind to think out a safe method of getting to the net.

However, then there is the other kind 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 opponent. 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 very good psychologist.

The first kind of tennis player mentioned above simply strikes the ball without much thought about what he is really up to, while the latter always has a definite strategy and sticks to it.

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The hard-hitting, erratic, net-rushing player is a person of impulse. There is no real system to his/her game, no comprehension of your game. He will make brilliant coups on the spur of the moment, largely by instinct; but there is no, mental power of consistent thinking. It is an fascinating sort of character.

The most unnerving player is the one who mixes his/her style from back to fore court at the direction of an ever-active mind. This/her is the player to study and learn from. He is a player with a definite intention. A player who has an answer to every problem you present him in your game. He is the most subtle opponent in the world of tennis. He is of the school of Brookes. Second only to him is the player of slavish determination that sets his/her mind on one strategy and sticks to it, bitterly, fiercely fighting to the end, with never a thought of changing.

This is the player whose psychology is rather easy to understand, but whose mental standpoint is difficult to upset, for he never allows himself to think of anything except the business at hand. This/her player is your Johnston or your Wilding. I respect the intelligence of Brookes more, but I admire the determination of Johnston.

Pick out your sort from your own mental processes, and then plan your game along the lines best suited to you. When two men are in the same class as regards stroke and equipment, the determining factor in any given match is the mental standpoint. Luck, so-called, is often seizing the psychological advantage of a break in the game, and turning it to your own advantage. We hear a great deal about the “shots players have made.” Few realize the importance of the “shots players have missed.”

The psychology of missing shots is just as important as that of making them, and at times a miss by an inch is of more value than a return that is killed by your opponent. Let me explain. A player forces you far out of court with an angle-shot. You run hard to it, and getting there, drive it hard and fast down the side-line, missing it by an inch. Your opponent is surprised and put off his stride, understanding that your shot might just as well have gone in as out. He will expect you to attempt it again and he will not risk it next time. He will try to play the ball, and may make an error. You have thus stolen some of your opponent’s confidence, and increased his/her chance of error: all this by a miss.

If you had just tapped back that ball, and it had been killed, your opponent would have felt even more confident of your inability to put the ball out of his/her reach, while you would merely have been winded for no reason.

Let’s suppose that you had succeeded with that shot down the sideline. It was an apparently impossible achievement. First it amounts to TWO points, because it took one away from your opponent that should have been his/her and gave you one that you should never have had. Second it also worries your opponent, because he feels that he has lost a big chance.

The psychology of a tennis match is fascinating, but readily understandable. Both men start with equal chances. Once one player establishes a real lead, his/her confidence goes up, while his/her opponent worries, and his/her mental viewpoint becomes poor. The sole objective of the first player is to hold his/her lead, thus maintaining his/her confidence.

If the second player pulls even or pulls ahead, the inevitable result is an even more drastic contrast in psychology of the players. First, there is the natural confidence of the leader of the game, but it is boosted by the great stimulus of having turned a seemingly inevitable defeat into a probable victory. The case of the other player is the reverse. He is apt to lose confidence and play worse. The breakdown of his game plan soon follows.

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