You may think tennis is a game of ball and racket, field and net. It is not.
Tennis is a battle between persons, two or four persons, a war for mastery of the universe and ruler of the galaxy.
In the words of the famous saying, All's fair in love or war!
As for any interaction between different people, the psychology rules the communication. Tennis can be won or lost by psychological warfare.
And I'm going to tell you how. No matter if you are a good or poor player, with my techniques you will raise your winning average!
Describe yourself as useless. Noone will believe you, but you have the advantage that later, if you should possibly lose, you can say I told you so.
Take something innocent along - like MSM for tennis elbow, and offer your opponent one. But give him a differnt pill - one for constipation, say. Or a soporific, a sleeping pill. If he falls asleep on the court, you win by default.
You don't have to go into mind-altering drugs, or slippping it into his iced tea, unless it is a serious competition.
First, perhaps you can avoid a warm up completely. If you need it, do your exercises out of sight. Then come on and say "you don't need a warmup, I know".
In Switzerland, it's typical to warm up for an hour to get all your strokes going well. Backhand, forehand, netplay, serve - any trained player has such a routine, standard all over Switzerland, set in the constitution I think, He is completely destroyed if you do anything different.
A little change is enough - I like to practice at the net first, for instance. Then he has to feed you nice balls while you can make him run back and forth madly. He won?t ahve any energy to practice in his turn!
And since you booked the court for only an hour, for fifty to a hundred francs, you don't want to waste any time on practice anyway. Or else you have no time for a match. The rule is, donßt let him get into rhythm*
Pretty soon he'll be playing as badly and carelessly as you. He'll reduce his standard so it remains just high enough to beat you. Then, later, while he's not concentrating, you can start playing better, and he's lost it.
Let me demonstrate the Australian Serve.
If he is serving well, you have to take strong action. He's aced you. Next ball that whistles past you, you call a net ball, it touched the cord ever so slightly. This is nice and he can?t complain, he gets to try again.
He's driven it past you again! Just as he is ready to serve, you find you have to tie your shoelaces. This, of course, is something you should do at any time when the game is getting tough against you.
Not an ace again. This is getting serious. This time, he throws it up, it's going to drill a hole through you. Just before he hits the ball, you call out Hold It!. A fly got in your eye. Sorry, he has to replay it. Damn flies are bad down this end.
Just in case, next time you have to go in the field next door to get a wild ball, bring back a piece ot cow dung. (In Switzerland, there are cows in the fields next to every tennis court). Before you change end, tread the dung into the sand by the baseline, then it is he who gets the flies.
This is the time for a call of foot fault. You believe he had a foot on the baseline, as he served last time. It doesn't matter that you can't see the line from where you are. Most European players are a full pace into the court when they hit the ball - completely unfair to a player who knows what the rules are. You don't even have to call a fault - just say tactfully that you think he's cheating. He'll be so worried, you will have double faults for he rest of the game.
This trick works because Europeans play only singles, never doubles. They learn to stay on the baseline, hitting long balls to each other. A more boring game I can't imagine - might as well play against a wall. They can handle forehand and backhand, they can run from side to side well.
But what they can't do, is run forward and back. If you play a short shot, he has to run forward, probably tripping over, and anyway getting to the ball so fast that he hits it over the baseline and out of the court. Forgot to correct for own velocity. Slips on the sand.
And then once you bring him forward, play the next shot long. Running backward is even more difficult than running forward - he is sure to fall over. Practice your looper ball and your lobs. He will charge right at the ball and gets in his own way, and finish by running into the wall or the net at the back of the court.
By varying short and long, more than anything else, you will confuse him completely. This is just not the sort of game he learned to play! You may lose some points, but he will tire of all this running round and round, and you will win in the long run.
The critical times are the 5th point in each game and the seventh game.
At a time where concentration is needed, when he is intense, mention something completely irrelevant. You may need practice choosing topics, so I'll give you a few tips.
"Sorry, I was worrying about my sick pussy!"
"By the way, do you know a good dentist / lawyer / garage ?"
"Isn't is beautiful weather today?"
"What is your daughter doing at the moment"
When he misses a shot, take every opportunity to say "bad luck". It was a great shot, just the wind is very irregular. (This will get him worrying about the wind - even in a hall)
Note that anything landing near the line, if he hit it, is out. Call it loudly and immediately. But if there is any question, you should take the opportunity to be nice and tell him to replay it, suddenly you're not sure. He can only thank you.
I hit it long? My racket was just newly strung and hits it too hard.
I missed the ball? it landed in a sandy hole in the court, or, this ball is flat, lost its pressure, wobbles in the air. Then hit it away, as hard as you can, into the forest, so noone can ever check it out!
The ball landed too close to me.
The sun was in my eyes. It's easier for you, you're taller!
You have much better chances of winning, even against a so-called better player. He just didn't understand what we call "the whole game of tennis".
But if you've done it right, he'll be a broken man, psychologically destroyed. He'll never play you again.
Just be nice to those you vanquish. Visit him in the mental asylum.