When the racket hits the fuzzy round

Regardless of the stroke, the player has to observe that impact, track the ball clearly by line of sight up to the impact with the racket.  They tell us this, the pro coaches in the videos.  But they fail to inform that it is the key condition, by far.  Eye tracking sets the timing of the stroke, and makes the game of tennis.  This is the advantage of the two handed  backhand, it moves he point of impact back so the player gets a better visual.  Then, says the unproven theory, the backhand can perform just as well if the point of impact is moved back, just an inch or two.  Can the single handed wrist make this work?   I think so.  My living room is empty, let me get a ball and racket and perform the experiment.


Without a doubt.  Dribbling the ball against the living room wall, I set my wrist and stance to have a full visualization of the racket face.  I nearly had my back to the wall, and my racket wrist crooked a bit.  But my eye would trigger a rapid wrist adjustment at the last moment, correcting any angle error on the racket face.

The eye is triggering a sequence of stroke steps, starting with feet, ending with racket wrist; but travelling up the body as a synchronized muscle wave.  These are way stations along the flight of the ball, the eye triggering a kind of discrete Kalman filter, mathematicians call it.  The muscle sgeps have to happen in  schedule, each step at the appropriate way station of the ball.  The idea is that the body adjust to keep the eye stationary relative o spine, and that becomes the reference frame.  The tangential line, where arm swing intercepts ball, that is controlled.  This process, capability, ushers in the stone age, almost within a few generation after rock throwing was perfected, I am sure of it.