Long ago there was a baby elephant that could use his enormous ears as wings and fly.  Knowing that elephants don’t normally fly he was sure that he couldn’t fly either.  That is until his friend the mouse (Timothy if I remember correctly) gave him a magic feather that would let him fly.

Believing his friend and in the feather Dumbo did learn to fly and attributed his ability to the magic feather.  It was his belief that allowed him to fly as much as his peculiar aerodynamics.  The point here is that belief in anything goes a long way and having belief in a plan or a tactic is as important in being successful as how you might hit the ball.  For one thing having a plan helps shorten the decision making time which allows one to be more consistent.  As you may know I ask people playing singles to hit crosscourt quite a bit.  The reasons are that the net is lower, the court is longer and the stroke is more natural when the hit is crosscourt.  This automatically makes a player more consistent.  Let’s say as an example that a player believes with every fiber of his being that hitting the ball down the line is the way to win.  That belief will take him a long way especially compared to someone with no magic feather (belief).  There will come a time however when he plays someone of the same ability with the same level of belief in hitting the ball crosscourt.  He will then lose.

Have a strong belief in what you are doing and have good reasoning to back it up and you will be on the way to getting the most out of your game.