The hard-hitting, erratic, net-rushing player is a person of impulse. There is no real strategy to his/her game, no comprehension of your game. He will make brilliant coups on the spur of the second, fundamentally by instinct; but there is no, mental power of consistent thinking. It is an fascinating type of character.
The really perilous player is the one who mixes his/her style from back to fore court at the direction of an ever-alert mind. This/her is the player to study and gather from. He is a player with a certain purpose. A player who has an answer to every problem you present him in your game. He is the most subtle antagonist in the world of tennis. He is of the teach of Brookes. Second only to him is the player of persistent determination that sets his/her mind on one plot and adheres to it, bitterly, fiercely fighting to the end, with never a thought of change.
This is the player whose psychology is rather simple to be with you, but whose mental standpoint is hard to upset, because he never permits himself to reckon about anything but the business at hand. This/her player is your Johnston or your Wilding. I respect the intelligence of Brookes more, but I admire the tenacity of purpose of Johnston.
Choose your sort from your own mental processes, and then plot your game along the lines most suited to you. When two men are in the same class concerning stroke, strength and gear, the deciding thing in any game is the mental viewpoint. Luck, so-called, is usually just seizing the psychological value of a break in the game, and turning it to your own account. We hear a lot about the “shots he has made.” Few be with you the importance of the “shots he has missed.”
The knowledge of missing shots is just as vital as that of making them, and at times a miss by an inch is of more value than a return that is killed by your opponent. Let me tell you why. A player drives you far out of court with an slant-shot. You run hard to it, and getting there, drive it hard and quick down the side-line, missing it by an inch. Your opponent is shocked and place off his stride, appreciative that your shot could just as well have gone in as out. He will expect you to try it again and he will not take the risk next time. He will try to play the ball, and may make an error. You have thus taken some of your opponent’s confidence, and increased his/her opportunity of error: all this by a miss.
If you had just tapped back that ball, and it had been killed, your opponent would have felt increasingly confident of your incapacity to get the ball out of his/her reach, even as you would merely have been winded for no reason.
Let’s suppose that you had succeeded with that shot down the sideline. It was an apparently impossible achievement. First it amounts to TWO points, in that it took one away from your opponent that should have been his/her and gave you one that you should never have had. Second it also upsets your opponent, because he feels that he has lost a huge opportunity.
The psychology caught up in a tennis match is fascinating, but readily understood. Both men start with equal opportunities. Once one player establishes a real lead, his/her confidence rises, even as his/her opponent worries, and his/her mental viewpoint becomes poor. The sole objective of the first player is to hold his/her lead, thereby holding his/her confidence.
If the second player draws even or draws ahead, the inevitable reaction is an even greater contrast in psychology. There is the natural confidence of the leader, but coupled with the fantastic stimulus of having turned a seemingly inevitable defeat into a probable victory. The case of the other player is the reverse. He is likely to lose confidence and play worse. The collapse of his game plot soon follows.