New Balls Please

I was lucky enough to get Centre Court tickets to Wimbledon recently. Watching Andy Roddick play Michael Llodra, I thought I’d watch their head and eyes as they played the ball.

Ideally for this you need slow motion photography or head-mounted cameras, and all I had was a pair of binoculars. However, it appeared to me that Roddick was looking some way ahead of his racket when he hit the ball. Llodra, however, seemed to look down at the contact between ball and racket when playing backhands, but more in front on forehands. Llodra won the first set 6-4, with his backhands being especially strong.

As time went by, however, I thought Roddick had brought his focus closer to the contact area, though still in front. Llodra, meanwhile, seemed to be less consistent, sometimes looking at he contact area, and sometimes a way in front. There wasn’t a complete correlation between where he looked and whether he won the point or not, but he seemed to be more likely to be successful when his focus was nearer the contact area. Roddick went on to win the next three sets and the match.

It’s certainly possible that my observations were mistaken, or that Roddick’s game improved and Llodra’s deteriorated, their gaze positions altered as a consequence. For instance, if Roddick started hitting the ball harder, Llodra might have had less time to get in position for his shots, including his head position.

So is there any evidence that where you look when you hit the ball is important in tennis? Actually, there is...

In 2007, Damien Lafont presented a paper entitled “Gaze Control during the Hitting Phase in Tennis”. Using high-speed photography, he found that most professional players looked out in front of the racket, sometimes into the opponent’s court at the moment of impact. However, the visual strategy of the very best players, such as Federer and Nadal, differed in two respects. Firstly, they fixated the contact zone, and secondly they maintained this fixation until after they had completed their swing.

This is a bit more than the traditional “keep your eye on the ball”. The ball can be arriving at speeds of over 130mph, which is too fast for the eyes to track accurately all the way. They must be able to make some early judgments about where the ball is going to go by watching their opponent’s actions as he plays the shot. There is likely to be some early pursuit of the ball to confirm this.

Knowing when to time your shot can be estimated from when the ball bounces in front of you, and then the elite players start focusing on the area, some way in front of them, where they intend to hit the ball – the contact area. It seems that they don’t actually watch the ball onto the racket, but instead watch the racket hit the ball in the contact area (as opposed to watching the swing of the racket as it hits the ball).

Federer adds one, possibly unique twist to this. He actually twists his head so that he can see the contact area through the back of the racket. He thus ensures that his head and eyes are still at the point of contact, and immediately afterwards, making it less likely hat he’ll snatch the shot by looking ahead too early.

Federer’s technique may not be for everybody, and he has been perfecting it over a number of years. Photographs show him doing this at the age of three. However, the idea of training yourself to focus on the contact zone as, and immediately after, you play the shot can be practised.

Many courts are surrounded by wire netting. You can push a ball into the netting to hold it in place at different heights and positions for different shots. Then, when you play, imagine the ball is held in place for a millisecond as you swing the racket. You then look for contact between your racket and the ball either from the front of the racket, like Nadal, or from the back, like Federer, whichever seems to suit you best.

David Donner

http://www.donneroptometrists.co.uk/sports-vision.htm