GENERAL TENNIS PSYCHOLOGY (2)
The dangerous man is the player who mixes his style from back to fore court at the direction of an ever-alert mind. This is the man to study and learn from. he is a player with a definite purpose. A player who has an answer to every query you propound him in your game. He is the most subtle antagonist in the world. He is of the school of Brookes. Second only to him is the man of dogged determination that sets his mind on one plan and adheres to it, bitterly, fiercely fighting to the end, with never a thought of change. He is the man whose psychology is easy to understand, but whose mental viewpoint is hard to upset, for he never allows himself to think fo anything except the business at hand. This man is your Johnston or your Wilding. I respect the mental capacity of Brookes more, but I admire the tenacity of purpose of Johnston.
Pick out your type from your own mental processes, and then work out your game along the lines best suited to you.
When two men are, in the same class, as regards stroke equipment, the determining factor in any given match is the mental viewpoint. Luck, so-called, is often grasping the psychological value of a break in the game, and turning it to your own account.
We hear a great deal about the “shots we have made.” Few realize the importance of the “shots we have missed”. The science of missing shots is as important as that of making them, and at times a miss by an inch is of more value that a return that is killed by your opponent.
Let me explain. A player drives you far out of court with an angle-shot. You run hard to it, and reaching, drive it hard and fast down the side-line, missing it by an inch. Your opponent is surprised and shaken, realizing that your shot might as well have gone in as out. He will try to play the ball, and may fall into error. You have thus taken some of your opponent’s confidence, and increased his chance of error, all by a miss.
If you had merely popped back that return, and it had been killed, your opponent would have felt increasingly confident of your inability to get the ball out of his reach, while you would merely have been winded without result.
Let us suppose you made the shot down the sideline. It was a seemingly impossible get. First it amounts to two points in that it took one away from your opponent that should have been his and gave you one you ought never to have had. It also worries your opponent, as feels he has thrown away a big chance.
The psychology of a tennis match is very interesting, but easily understandable. Both men start with equal chances. Once one man establishes a real lead, his confidence goes up, while his opponent worries, and his mental viewpoint becomes poor. The sole object of the first man is to hold his lead, thus holding his confidence. If the second player pull even or draws ahead, the inevitable reaction occurs with even a grater contrast in psychology. there is the natural confidence of the leader now with the second man as well as that great stimulus of having turned seeming defeat into probably victory. the reverse in the case of the first player is apt to hopelessly destroy his game, and collapse follows. tennis
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