Tennis psychology is the same as understanding the workings of your opponent’s mind, and assessing the effect of your own game on his/her mental viewpoint 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 occurring under various circumstances. This is because you react differently in different moods and under different circumstances.

You must realize the effect on your game of the resulting irritation, pleasure, confusion, or whatever other form your reaction is. Does it increase your efficiency? If so, try for it, but never give it to your opponent. Does it deprive you of concentration? If so, either remove the reason, or if that is not possible, strive to ignore it.

After you have properly judged your own reaction to conditions, study 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 temperaments you have to seek to compare with those people, whose reactions you are already familiar with.

Someone who can regulate his/her own mental processes 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 control one’s own mental processes after studying them very carefully .

A steady, phlegmatic baseline player is rarely a keen thinker. If he was he would not adhere to 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 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 intended to break up your game. He is a very 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 variety of his/her game. This player is a very good psychologist.

The first kind of tennis player mentioned above simply hits the ball without much thought about what he is actually up to, while the latter always has a definite plan and adheres to it.