Winning Phychologycally Over You Opponent

Author: William L. Booker

 Considering that two opponents in tennis are equal in terms of their experience, equipment, and stroke play, the factor that determines the final result of the match can be an matter of fortune as they say and how can the two opponents can adjust themselves psychologically to fluctuating and unexpected luck in the game (they may or may not be due to your good or bad fortune) to have their confidence up and go with their heads high while having maximum pressure on the opponent all the while.

We normally hear many players comment about the shots that they were successful in playing; however, only some will talk about important shots that they were not able to play or missed. Sometimes shots that are missed turn out to as important as the shots that are played; and under some particular situations, a shot that gets missed by an inch is more important compared to a lame return that your opponent can return easily.
The above statement; however, may require some amount of explanation to do. For instance, think that the opponent player plays an angled shot for that requires you to make a lot of ground; and after reaching it finally, you are able to return it fast and hard along the sideline taking off your opponent fully by surprise. But, unluckily the ball bounces just outside the sideline because of which you lose the point. Your opponent was lucky that the ball landed outside the sideline, if the ball had landed inside the sideline, he would have not been able to play it and you could have ended up winning a point. Your opponent understands that he has escaped the line just by a whisker and the thought sets up in his intellect. He knows that you can repeat that shot and the next time luck might not favor him. So he registers this in his mind that not to give the same opportunity to you. What does this result in? Your opponent’s confidence is broken and his shot selection is restricted; and you have achieved all this because of a missed stroke!

  If you had not ran along and taken the pain over that last stroke and returned a simple stroke without having the risk of misplacing it, your opponent would have ended getting a simple point, you could have ended up boosting your opponents confidence while decreasing you own confidence. Either way, if you look at points, you ended up losing one; however, in the first case of a brilliant missed shot you had ended getting all the psychological benefits, but if you had sent a simple return shot to your opponent, he would have straight away lashed on to it and scored points in both the departments i.e. point and mental lead.
Now, let us suppose that you anyhow managed to return the shot and get the ball landed within the sideline of the court instead of outside the court and eventually beating the opponent for the point. However, if your opponent is thinking he lost two points one which he gave away and another one that he must have got in place of giving you that point. It results in a considerable amount of mental fear to your opponent who will be thinking that he is given away something that would be hard to get back.

 It may be clear by now that how your psychological thinking can change or affect the result of the matches. Considering the two opponents started equally, when one opponent starts to lead, his confidence increases while the other opponent’s looses confidence. If the player who has got the lead continues in the same manner, then not only he wins points, but also increases his confidence level and improves his psychology and this difference will be clearly visible between the two opponents. However, if the other player starts to catch up and pulls up his confident, than unless the first opponent has a better control over his confidence, the psychological forces that get created can destroy his game and he could end up in the losing side. And on the other side, the second player will have tremendous boost to his confidence by snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.
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Discover the importance of knowing your tennis psychology as well as experts tips to help you service the opening gun of tennis