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A tennis ball is very distinct and are used by millions of children and adults all over the world for playing tennis, of course, but many, many other less formal games too. They are not only the correct size for tennis, presumably anyway at 2.7 inches or 6.7 centimetres in diameter, but they also fit neatly into a hand or a dog’s mouth. Therefore people use them for playing catch, for various games of softball like rounders and for throwing for the dog to retrieve.

When I was a child, all tennis balls were white, but now you would be very hard pushed indeed to find a white one if, if indeed it is at all possible. These days, all tennis balls are day-glow colours like yellow, green and orange. Presumably this change was made for the sake of visibility on the TV screen.

The word ‘tennis’ comes from the French – ‘Tenez’ (pronounced ‘teney’), which meant ‘Take up Position’ or simply ‘Start’. The origins of tennis were almost certainly well over a thousand years ago, when it was played by monks. The racquet or racket was the flat of the hand and the ball was wooden.

No-one is really certain whether the next innovation was to wear leather mitts or to modify the ball to leather, but whichever it was, there was obviously a move to make the game less painful. When the ball changed from being wooden, it was manufactured of animal skin, most often leather, sewn up with sinews and stuffed with anything that came to hand, such as straw, wool and hair – animal and human.

The point is that these early wooden and leather balls did not bounce, so the game was very different back then. Eventually, the monks began using ‘racquets’, but they looked more like bats than modern day tennis racquets.

In Disraeli’s book, “Sybil” (1845), the plot reveals how Lord Eugene De Vere was to travel to Hampton Court to play tennis, so the game was a familiar sport then, but it took until the late Nineteen Century for the game that we know today to become formalized by a set of rules. In 1874, Major Walter Wingfield was granted the patent for the rules and equipment of ‘lawn tennis’ and not much has altered since.

The next year tennis courts were set up in the USA and then the game of tennis spread like wildfire. Wingfield set down the rules of the game and the sort of equipment to be used. The game has not changed much since then basically, but it has changed a great deal nevertheless. The shape of the court is different now and science has been applied to the apparatus to improve it.

The original ball in the late Nineteenth Century was manufactured of solid rubber and so would have been quite weighty, but at least it did bounce which instantly made the game more interesting and more lively. A bouncing ball made tennis into a more interesting game to play and a more interesting game to watch. The rubber ball allowed tennis to be a spectator sport that crowds would pay to watch.

Contemporary tennis balls have a rubberized skin, which is about eighty percent rubber, filled with air and covered by a layer of ‘hairy’ felt. The felt is important because it gives the surface of the ball more grip and can standardize the bounce too. It also gives the ball a more foreseeable flight path even in the presence of wind.

The last aspect of modern tennis balls is the air inside. This can either be pressurized or non-pressurized. Pressurized balls give a better bounce whilst new, but they lose pressure with time and so are less reliable, whereas non-pressurized balls actually improve slightly with use, which is considered a benefit.

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Tennis psychology is nothing more than understanding the make-up of your opponent’s mind and gauging the effect of your own strategy on his/her mental viewpoint and also understanding the mental 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 happening under various circumstances. This is because you react differently in different moods and under different circumstances.

You have to realize the effect on your game of the resulting annoyance, joy, bewilderment, or whatever other form your reaction takes. Does it improve your efficiency? If so, strive for it, but never offer it to your opponent. Does it deprive you of concentration? If so, either remove the reason, but if that isn’t possible, try to ignore it.

Once you have correctly measured your own reaction to conditions, study your opponents in order to determine their temperaments. Like characters react similarly, and you can judge men of your own kind by yourself. Other temperaments you have to try to liken with those whose reactions you already know.

A person who can regulate his/her own mental processes has an great chance of reading those of another for the mind works along certain lines of thought and can be studied. One can only control one’s own mental processes after carefully examining them.

The regular, unemotional baseline player is rarely a keen thinker. If he were, he would not adhere to the baseline. The physical appearance of a player is usually a pretty clear indication of his/her type of mind. The stolid, easy-going player, who normally advocates the baseline game, does it because he does not want to stir up his/her slow mind to think out a reliably safe method of reaching the net.

Then there is the other sort of baseline player, who would rather remain on the back of the court while directing an attack intending to break up your game. He is a much more 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. He is a good psychologist.

The first type of player mentioned above simply strikes the ball with little idea of what he is actually doing, while the latter always has a definite strategy and adheres to it.

If you are a beginner tennis player or want to know more about the general psychology of tennis, please go to our site entitled Tennis Tips for Beginners This article, Tennis Psychology (Part 1) has free reprint rights.