I began writing the book that is the basis for this article – The Art and Science of Ball Watching – in August of 2019 and finished it in January of 2021. In a sense, though, I have been working on it since I started playing tennis fifty-five years ago at the age of five. In high school I played four years of varsity tennis in addition to sanctioned USTA junior tournaments. I probably reached a 4.5-5.0 level. I considered playing small college tennis, but by then I was burned out on the sport, and knew that my pre-med studies wouldn’t allow time for college tennis. But tennis was in my blood, and I started playing again with a passion after medical school. During this time, I really started to study the technical aspects of the game. My idea for the book started out with various technical ideas that I had been kicking around by watching great players over several generations. In the end I came to the conclusion that good racket to ball contact depends on good ball watching. I wrote the book to teach myself how to see racket to ball contact and my hope is it can help you do the same.
Paul Hamori, MD
There is a revolution taking place in neuroscientific theories of sensory data processing. This newer thinking revolves about the theory of predictive processing. Many neuroscientists are now proponents of what is known as top-down bottom up processing. Essentially this hypothesis...
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Martin Samuels, the famous Harvard neurologist has said, "your brain is you." This article explores the miracle that is the brain and how it allows us to play our beloved sport, tennis. In the course of my work as a...
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In my new book, The Art and Science of Ball Watching (Click Here) I explored Roger Federer's unique ball watching technique. The book is aimed at finding a methodology to learn how to see contact–in as much as this is...