Every one of us has heard the instruction, “Watch the ball!” It’s one of those tennis instructions that is probably offered millions of times each day around the world.
But if it were such an effective instruction, why would it have to be repeated so often?
And, what exactly is the problem that the instruction to “watch the ball” is trying to fix?
Years ago, I remember watching a tennis pro teaching an advanced beginner a private lesson. The pro was feeding balls and the student kept missing and hitting the frame. The pro kept feeding ball after ball and simply said, “Watch the ball” with each ball fed.
The student would alternate from missing the ball completely, to hitting the frame, to an occasional solid contact. The student got more and more frustrated with every attempt and it appeared that hearing the instruction, “Watch the ball!” only made things worse.
Finally, she threw down her racquet and shouted back at the pro, “Darn it, I am watching the ball!”
Let’s take a look at this common instruction, the problems it is trying to fix, and how to solve your own problems more quickly than by simply repeating, “Watch the ball!”
Situation #1: Undeveloped hand-eye coordination
With a beginner who has not played a great deal of ball sports, undeveloped hand-eye coordination may be the reason this new player is not making solid contact.
Telling them to more closely “watch the ball” may have little or no effect on their progress. It is much more appropriate and helpful to have beginners perform various exercises to develop their eye-hand coordination.
These exercises might be as simple as bouncing a ball down or up off the strings or even using slow-bouncing or foam balls to give them more time to read and react to incoming balls.
Situation #2: Lack of focus
Focus or concentration is certainly one of the keys to succeeding in tennis. After all, an average tennis ball travels from baseline to baseline in about two seconds.
If a player takes more than the first second to react and prepare, he is usually already too late to hit a successful shot. A momentary lack of focus due to daydreaming or simply getting distracted accounts for more errors on a tennis court than most people realize.
To prove this point, ask yourself if you ever had to sneeze in the middle of a point. The sneeze only takes one or two seconds, but is 100% disruptive to staying in that particular point. Improving concentration or ball focus takes practice like anything else.
Components of good focus are patience and the skill of staying in the present moment, as opposed to worrying about the previous point or the point that is yet to come. In today’s tennis, a player with patience and focus is said to have high “shot tolerance,” a modern-day phrase that simply says a player is consistent. And, we all know that consistent tennis wins.
To improve your shot tolerance, focusing on watching the ball can certainly help. However, you may also want to try practicing some simple consistency drills to speed up the process. For example, trying to reach 20 points while hitting with a ball machine.
Count each successful shot as one point towards your goal. But, with each unforced error, take five points away. Make the drill as challenging as you want by adjusting the difficulty of the incoming ball or by creating a target area that challenges your skill level.
Situation #3: Undeveloped anticipation or ball judgment skills
The final situation for this discussion is contained in the enormous category of anticipation or ball judgment skills.
Hearing the instruction, “Watch the ball!” is simply not the most effective way to build these critical tennis skills. I like the phrase “See the ball with your brain and not just with your eyes.” This means that a certain understanding of ball flight has to be developed for a player to advance past the beginning stages.
Each and every ball hit has five variables, speed, spin, arc, depth, and direction. The combinations of these variables make each ball unique. If you are helping a beginner progress, isolate each of the variables independent of one another and let the player get accustomed to judging each of these variables, one at a time.
After feeding a series of about 20 balls with varieties of each, try combining two or three of them and have the student get more and more acquainted with the flight and bounce of various balls. Learning to see with your brain versus just hearing the instruction, “Watch the ball” will help any player progress more quickly.
The bottom line is that tennis is a complex sport and, while watching the ball is certainly a key element to successful play, there are some other ingredients to help each player progress as fast as possible.
Joe Dinoffer is a USPTA and PTR Master Professional. Visit his site, Oncourt Offcourt, at www.oncourtoffcourt.com.
Since its inception in 1994, Oncourt Offcourt has become the world’s leading source for hundreds of creative training aids, books and videos for the tennis industry.
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I agree that watching the ball is only a small part of the game of tennis, once you pick up the flight of the ball your hand and eye co-ordination takes over, as you see in the above photo of Lindsay Davenport. A very nice article thank you. Patrick.
Thanks for this.