Tennis psychology is the same as understanding the make-up of your opponent’s mind and gauging the effect of your own game on his/her mental viewpoint 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 ensuing annoyance, joy, confusion, or whatever other form your reaction takes. Does it improve your prowess? If so, strive for it, but never give it to your opponent. Does it deprive you of concentration? If so, either remove the cause, or if that is not possible, strive to ignore it.

Once you have correctly assessed your own reaction to circumstances, observe your opponents in order to determine their characters. Similar characters react similarly, and you may judge men of your own kind by yourself. Different temperaments you must seek to liken with people whose reactions you already know.

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

A steady, unemotional baseline player is seldom a quick thinker. If he was, he would not stay on the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is often a fairly clear indicator of his/her sort of mind. The stolid, easy-going player, who normally advocates the baseline strategy, does it because he does not want to activate up his/her torpid mind to think out a reliably safe strategy of getting to the net.

Then there is the other kind of baseline player, who would rather stay at the back of the court while directing an attack intending to break up your game. He is a much more dangerous player and a deep, keen thinking antagonist. He gets 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 merely strikes the ball with little thought about what he is actually doing, while the latter always has a definite strategy and adheres to it.