Title: The Kinematics of the Return of Serve in Tennis: The Role of Anticipatory Information
Abstract: Introduction The demands of a fast ball sport like tennis place heavy emphasis on anticipation and perception. There are severe spatial and temporal requirements that are intricately combined. Glencross and Cibich (11) argue, that perceptual anticipation is essential in fast ball sports, because of inherent human limitations in reaction time and the movement time would cause the decision to be made too late for an effective response. In a classical study, Bahill and LaRritz (3) revealed that expert baseball players are not able to track a ball during its whole flight due to human visual limitations. They also argue that even the best athletes are not able to track a fast ball which is less than 1.5m away. To hit a fast moving ball a receiver needs to identify: where to swing in order to hit the ball (spatial accuracy); when to swing (temporal accuracy);and how to time the length of the swing. When receiving a fast serve in tennis (up to 250 km.hr-1) elite players have as little as 400 ms from the server's racquet-ball contact to make their response. The task for the tennis player who is trying to return a serve includes: anticipation and timing, ball flight trajectory prediction in space, and on-line modification of racquet-ball alignment (20). Schmidt (20) suggested we can functionally categorise anticipation into spatial and temporal components. Accordingly previous anticipation research in tennis has mainly adopted laboratory approaches using either spatial or temporal occlusion techniques. Research has typically recreated visual information by projecting screen videos or film frames of tennis players (21,22). In 2005, Shim et al. (23) argue that it is possible to anticipate the type of stroke (i.e., topspin lob, ground stroke), but not the direction of the outgoing ball. Other researches, Abernthy and Zawi (1) or Shim et al. (22)compared groups of novice players and expert players in fast ball sports. They show that the groups focus upon different visual cues and that experts were more accurate at anticipating ball flight particularly when they were tested with a representative environment (i.e., on court rather than watching a video or point light display). In other in situ tennis research (19, 24) eye movements were examined to determine which cues the eyes focus on during the anticipation of the opponent's motion. Day (6) used a helmet which occluded the receiver's vision at the moment when the ball hit the server'sracquet. The results showed that skilled tennis players were able to make predictions based on pre-contact cues. Hence most in-situ research has been concerned with visual anticipation of ball direction. Williams (26) says that the player can rely on this deep prediction more reliably than on-line visual information from early parts of the ball flight. Despite the apparent importance of anticipatory cues from the server's action, players regularly practice using ball serving machines (in which anticipatory cues are largely absent). In 2007, Renshaw et al. (18) showed differences in the initiation times of back swing in cricket, back swing and downswing duration while facing the bowler and the ball machine. In 2011, Pinder et al. (16) is proposing ways how to optimize development programs in fast ball games and in which situations to use the ball machine. It is not clear how important prior vision of the server's action actually is for the timing of a receiver's movements. Clearly, ball trajectory information is also important for the returning player in order to successfully intercept it. For the period of time after the opponent hits the ball, research has mainly focused on spatial anticipation. For example in some studies, participants estimate where the ball would bounce on the court (10, 25). Williams (25) pointed out that expert players spend less time watching the ball, while in their remaining time they are able to watch the subsequent movements of their opponent. …
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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