Service Return Anticipation

[leis]

John: Would appreciate your thoughts on visual cues for service return and opponent's groundstrokes. If I can see the opponent's grip prior to the serve, I can prioritize the types of serve that the opponent might hit due to limitations of the grip. To get that split second anticipation on the service return, my primary focus is on the opponent's service toss about halfway to contact. The secondary focus(if one can call it that) is to watch the shoulders peripherally to anticipate the possible type of serve. At that point, things happen so fast that I must shift my eyes from the ball to the approximate area that I anticipate the racket will contact the ball. This allows me to pick up the racket angle at contact to determine whether the serve might be flat,wide, etc.
When I am trying hard to anticipate in a rally, I think my eyes do an equivalent process prior to my opponent contacting the ball in a groundstroke. I try to not follow the path of my groundstroke, but rather immediately focus on my opponent's racket because that is where my ball will end up.

[johnyandell]

Great question, but to be honest this is something I'm still formulating what I really think about all this. Eventually I will write about it in detail.