Ball Watching: Part 2

Not all elite players use the same ball watching techniques as Roger Federer. There many great ball watching in tennis beside Roger Federer. There are also some fantastic players who have really poor ball watching. Theoretically you can play great tennis without great ball watching. But I believe Federer's ball watching is foundational to his beautiful game and the tennis magic we see when he takes the court. We are all familiar with his prolonged sideways head position. But what my research found was something additional that I don't believe has ever been studied. This is a pronounced narrowing of his eyes around contact. Furthermore, on a significant percentage of his shots, he goes on to actually close his eyes after contact. That's right. Narrowed and/or closed eyes. Surprised? Read on. The Data As I said in Part 1 of this series (Click Here) I have watched Federer play live over 40 times. But to get to the root of his ball watching technique I needed evidence. I developed this by photographing him in practice. I watched him practice 2 hours a day for 2 consecutive days taking non-stop photos with the burst feature on a DSLR camera. Then I...