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.

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 happening 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 is. Does it increase your prowess? If so, strive for it, but never offer 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 accurately assessed your own reaction to conditions, observe your opponents in order to determine their temperaments. Like characters react similarly, and you may judge men of your own type by yourself. Opposite temperaments you must seek to compare with people whose reactions you know.

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

The 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 pretty clear indication of his/her kind of mind. The stolid, easy-going player, who usually advocates the baseline strategy, does so because he hates to stir up his/her torpid mind to work out a safe method of getting to the net.

However, then there is the other type of baseline player, who would prefer to stay on the rear of the court while supervising an attack intending to disrupt up your game. He is a very dangerous player and a deep, quick thinking antagonist. He obtains his/her results by changing his/her length and direction and worrying you with the variance of his/her game. This player is a very good psychologist.

The first sort of tennis player mentioned above simply hits the ball without much thought about what he is really up to, while the latter always has a solid, thought-out plan and sticks to it.