How to anticipate your opponent’s next move?

"Field Sense" may be teachable

Greetings,

As promised earlier...... here is an article from Wired Magazine, Issue 15.06

============ start article ============

Contributing editor Jennifer Kahn

Wayne Gretzky-Style 'Field Sense' May Be Teachable


Photograph by Darren Braun

In the otherwise unremarkable1984 National Hockey League game between the Edmonton Oilers and the Minnesota North Stars, there are five seconds that Peter Vint will watch over and over. The star of this sequence is Wayne Gretzky, widely considered the greatest hockey player of all time. In the footage, Gretzky, barreling down the ice at full speed, draws the attention of two defenders. As they converge on what everyone assumes will be a shot on goal, Gretzky abruptly fires the puck backward, without looking, to a teammate racing up the opposite wing. The pass is timed so perfectly that the receiver doesn't even break stride.

"Magic," Vint says reverently. A researcher with the US Olympic Committee, he collects moments like this. Vint is a connoisseur of what coaches call field sense or "vision," and he makes a habit of deconstructing psychic plays: analyzing the steals of Larry Bird and parsing Joe Montana's uncanny ability to calculate the movements of every person on the field. "In any sport, you come across these players," Vint says. "They're not always the most physically talented, but they're by far the best. The way they see things that nobody else sees — it can seem almost supernatural. But I'm a scientist, so I want to know how the magic works."

Athleticism is impressive but essentially prosaic, a matter of muscle. But vision is something else, something more elusive. Opponents struggling to anticipate Gretzky's next move often became disoriented, like hunters who think they're tracking a leopard, only to hear a twig crack directly behind them. The experience was so unnerving that players who had to face Gretzky repeatedly exhibited a kind of automatic dread. Describing the feeling in a 1997 Cigar Aficionado interview, former St. Louis Blues goalie Mike Liut said woefully: "I'd see him come down the ice and immediately start thinking, 'What don't I see that Wayne's seeing right now?' "

Such talent has long been assumed to be innate. "Coaches tend to think you either have it or you don't," Vint says. Unlike a jump shot or a penalty kick, field sense — which mixes anticipation, timing, and an acute sense of spatial relations — is considered essentially untrainable, a gift. Gretzky himself once fuzzily described it as having "a feeling about where a teammate is going to be. A lot of times, I can just turn and pass without looking."

But Vint rejects the notion that Gretzky-style magic is unteachable. Before taking a job at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado in 2005, he spent several years consulting for NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration, assessing the design of complex automated cockpits and looking for things that might cause pilot error. "In the cockpit, indicators will go off, and the pilot has to detect and interpret them depending on what mode the automation is in," he explains. That ability, Vint believes, has something in common with passing a puck. "They're both about taking in, processing, and reacting to complex information," he says.

Vint knows that the skill he calls "perceptual ability" develops, in part, to help a physical underdog against bigger, stronger players. If you can anticipate a throw, you don't need to be as fast. If you can intercept a pass by predicting its trajectory better than your opponent can, you don't need to be as big. Steve Nash, the point guard for the Phoenix Suns, famously never dunks but passes so brilliantly that he has been voted MVP two years in a row. Gretzky was always the runt of his team: small, slow, cursed by a soft shot, and so skinny one commentator cracked that "he could wear a fur coat on Halloween and go out disguised as a pipe cleaner."

"Growing up, I was always the small guy," Gretzky has said. "I couldn't beat people with my strength. My eyes and my mind have to do most of the work."

As Vint saw it, Gretzky-like field sense was rare not because it was mystical but because no one had bothered to understand it and train for it. Then he discovered Damian Farrow. A scientist at the Australian Institute of Sport, Farrow worked with Olympians and national athletes. But unlike the coaches Vint knew, who tended to focus on physical skills, Farrow had been hired specifically to study and teach perception. If his methods struck Vint as unusual — Farrow once had the women's basketball team watch game clips through 3-D glasses and simulate playing and passing in them — that only made their success more surprising.

"When I found Damian's work, I realized that this is how you could understand a player like Gretzky," Vint says. Farrow had statistics. He had answers. "He was taking a look behind the curtain of this magical thing."

At 37, Farrow has the wiry, tanned appearance of the agelessly fit. A competitive tennis player into his early twenties, he continues to look the part, oufitted in shorts, a crisp white polo shirt, and an oversize black digital watch. A deliberate and cerebral athlete, he was not especially quick — a weakness that rankled him. So Farrow decided he would get better at anticipating his opponent's shots.

He began cataloging other players' tendencies and eventually began to make connections between a rival's posture and racket position and a particular return. Perversely, though, Farrow found that the more he concentrated, the worse he played. "I was thinking so much that I couldn't react naturally anymore," he admits with an awkward laugh. "I got that 'paralysis by analysis.' "

Later, as a PhD candidate in human movement at the University of Queensland, Farrow began to suspect that the learning process needed to be unconscious in order to work. "Top tennis players can predict the direction and speed of the ball before it leaves the racket," Farrow says. "So what is it these experts intuitively see that the rest of us don't? What cues are they picking up on, and when?"

To understand what experts were seeing, Farrow meticulously dismantled the mechanics of the serve. He recruited two groups of players — novices and experts — and outfitted each with earmuffs and occlusion goggles, clear glasses that turn opaque when an assistant on the sidelines flips an electronic switch. He then put the athletes on court opposite an expert server. As the server's arm went back for the shot, Farrow would black out the goggles, leaving players to swing blindly at the incoming ball.

The experiment was not for the faint of heart. Even relatively gentle serves arrived at 60 miles per hour, battering receivers who happened to step into the shot. "The men in particular got uneasy," Farrow says dryly. He pulls out a faded photo of a man in tennis whites, standing in the ready position and peering through an oversize pair of plastic lenses. "You can see that he has a nervous grin on his face."

Great tennis players can tell from the angle of a server's arm where the ball will go. Novices generally don't have that skill. But they can learn it.
Photograph by Darren Braun

The point of the exercise was to identify exactly when a seasoned player knew where the ball would head. Farrow established five possible windows: First, he blackened the goggles just as the ball's flight path over the net was determined; second, as the server's racket made contact with the ball. Then he gave players less and less information — cutting off the image when the server's arm was cocked, as it was being drawn back, and, finally, at the very start of the toss.

Not surprisingly, receivers were better at guessing the ball's direction the later their vision cut out. But the results also revealed something more interesting. Graphs of the amateurs' reactions showed that they could anticipate where the ball would go only if they witnessed the racket making contact with it. Experts knew what would happen roughly a third of a second earlier, when the server's cocked arm was still unfolding.

What happened in that fraction of a second? A lot, Farrow reasoned. Up to a point, he theorized, the direction of a serve was fundamentally unpredictable: Whatever clues existed weren't ones that an opposing player could discern. By the time the ball had been hit, on the other hand, even a novice could make a plausible guess at its trajectory. What separated the pros from everyone else was the ability to pull directional information out of the early stages of a swing and therefore to predict a split second earlier where to head. This fraction of time is game- changing. A serve going 120 miles per hour takes approximately a third of a second to travel the 60 feet from baseline to service line. This means that an expert, who doesn't have to wait until contact, has twice as long to move, plant his feet, and swing.

This discovery fit with something Farrow and other tennis researchers had already suspected: Reflex speed is not the key factor in returning a serve. "People have tested casual players and experts, and their reaction times are essentially the same," Farrow says. The fact that Roger Federer can drill back a 140-mile-per-hour serve is partly a matter of muscle control. But it's also about processing subtle visual cues to predict where the ball will go and get to the right spot.

None of this was enough to make Farrow the hero of the clubhouse. Proving that anticipation mattered was one thing. The big question was, could it be taught? Farrow wanted to try, but he would be careful to not make the same mistake he had made with himself. He instructed some of the players from each group not to worry about predicting the direction of the serve but, instead, to focus on estimating its speed. The exercise was intended to force receivers to notice things like the angle of the racket head and the twist of a server's shoulders relative to his hips — all kinematic cues that also contribute to a serve's direction. Best of all, the connections would happen unconsciously. "It's called implicit learning," Farrow says. "We're getting them used to watching for the right stuff, things like more-spin-equals-less-speed, but they don't even know that they're doing it."

Using the goggles, Farrow then tested the speed-prediction group against one that had been traditionally coached on service returns and another control group that had received no coaching. At the end of the day, the players who'd been told to predict the ball's speed showed a small but significant improvement, anticipating the serve correctly an extra 5 percent of the time. More startling: The traditionally coached group didn't improve at all.

The difference was small, but it came quickly. After finishing his PhD in 2002, he applied for a job at the Australian Institute of Sport. "I wrote them a letter saying, 'You don't have someone like me, and you should,' " he says. "To their credit, they agreed."

Visiting the AIS campus is a bit like going on athletic safari. Located in the thinly forested hills of Canberra, the sprawling complex hosts roughly 300 athletes of various talents and physiques, from rangy national team basketball players to compact Olympic swimmers. On a summer morning after a thunderstorm, the sandstone cobbles are steaming and the air is warm and sharp with the antiseptic smell of gum trees. As I make my way to Farrow's office, a small herd of cyclists sweeps by, veering like gazelles around two large statues (a soccer defender slide-tackling a forward; a ponytailed gymnast braced in a handstand).

Farrow's department is headquartered in the Sports Science and Medicine building, one of many on campus that flies the lightning-bolt flag of the Republic of Gatorade. The office he meets me in is tidy to the point of desolation — the sole personal effect a toy Chicago Bulls basketball hoop stuck on one side of an enormous filing cabinet.

Since coming to the AIS, Farrow has turned into a one-man band of perceptual training, transferring his tennis experience to volleyball, basketball, cricket, and other sports. It's the culmination of an idea that originated 50 years ago, when a psychologist named Clarence Damron flashed slides of defensive plays at high school football players and then tested their ability to identify the maneuvers from the sidelines. Students who had watched the slides were better at guessing correctly, leading Damron to conclude that a boy could learn to be a lineman the same way he learned chemistry: by memorizing which elements and conditions led to a particular reaction.

Damron's experiments sparked some interest but never really caught on. "It was mostly academics interested in the theory," Farrow says. The methods were also crude, not immersive or immediate in a way that reflected gameplay. Sometimes, players got better at the tests — responding more quickly to flash cards and recognizing simulated patterns — but it was never clear whether they brought those improvements to the field. For coaches hoping to get an edge, perceptual training was like a promising rookie who choked when he got in the game.

Even now, the few people who do try to train vision often don't bother to figure out which skills are crucial. Several Major League Baseball teams, for instance, subscribe to a program known as vision therapy. Players are tested and trained on how quickly they can respond to arrows and dots flashing across a screen. But when an elite player like Albert Pujols and a non athlete are tested on their ability to identify flashing lights, Farrow says, they end up performing about the same. "That means it's not a talent that's separating the best from the rest."

Because of this, Farrow spends a lot of time simply trying to determine what it is experts see that amateurs don't. Among other things, he uses an eye-motion tracker to record where virtuoso players are looking during clutch situations, such as when passing under pressure from multiple defenders coming from different directions. He pulls up a videoclip from an Australian rules football practice that he conducted with the Adelaide Crows, a professional team. The game is essentially football crossed with rugby, and players advance the ball by kicking it to teammates. As the play unfolds, players break left and right. One runs very visibly up the middle.

Onscreen, a crosshair flits around. This is the darting sight of the Crows' kicker: a zigzag that covers the field, with minute pauses at key moments, like when he's assessing the openness of a potential receiver. Farrow's frame-by-frame analysis compares where good and bad kickers look and for how long. "We want to know, at what points are the experts doing something differently? When are they looking somewhere that the less skilled players aren't?"

Farrow has found that players who make poor decisions tend to glance at targets, rather than pausing on them. They're also more drawn to motion. "In a lot of team sports, you're attracted to the area of greatest movement," Farrow says. "But just be-cause there's a person running fast and waving his arms doesn't mean he's the best person to kick to."

Farrow has created a video database of hundreds of critical decision-making moments, which he projects life-size onto a blank wall at the Crows training center. Players watch the simulations, which are from the point of view of the kicker, and "pass" the ball to the player they think is in the best position — literally kicking it at the wall. Farrow got his idea from Bruce Abernathy, a former University of Queensland colleague who, in the early '90s, conducted similar exercises for racket-based sports like badminton and squash. On average, Farrow says, a typical footballer will get 5 to 10†percent better — choosing the best receiver an extra one time in 10 — though some have improved their game even more.

Learning these skills is difficult, however — particularly for older players with established habits. So Farrow is also thinking about how young athletes can develop field sense before their coaches make them believe it's impossible to acquire. To figure that out, he recently began interviewing elite players about their early life in sports. One factor is backyard games, or what Farrow calls unstructured play. Playing soccer with 30 other kids in a dusty village plot turns out to foster the kind of flexible thinking and acute spatial attention that pays off in high-level competition.

"We should be modeling our programs on that," Farrow says emphatically. "And what do we do instead? We put children in regimented, very structured programs, where their perceptual abilities are corralled and limited." Farrow recently made a poster of Wayne Gretzky and gave it to several AIS coaches. The Great One, he points out, spent thousands of hours scrimmaging with friends and neighbors on the homemade rink behind his family's house.

Although perceptual training has yet to sweep professional sports, the idea is gaining traction with a handful of US coaches and their colleagues. In a recent meeting with the US Olympic volleyball staff, Vint found himself listening to a performance wish list that included the ability to respond to jump serves coming in at high speeds. Vint asked the coaches what they thought the problem was. Were the receivers erratic, indicating a problem with motor skill? Were they getting screened by other players on the court? No, the coaches agreed, the problem was that the receivers weren't reading the trajectory of the ball fast enough to get in position. Like tennis players, they needed to improve their ability to interpret early cues.

If all goes well, Vint will start working with the US women's Olympic volleyball team this year and then expand to the men's team. He believes that better perception has a multiplier effect, giving players more time to concentrate on their execution and, in some sports, even helping them avoid the collisions that cause injury. Vint has also been collaborating with the national youth development arm of USA Hockey, devising a program that uses goal-cam footage to help goalies anticipate which quadrant (right, left, high, low) the puck will end up in. For now, Vint has made the exercise virtual because he can't risk a goalie taking a puck in the throat. But ultimately, the goalie may be wearing goggles and playing blind — like Luke Skywalker in Jedi training.

That's not his only project. Vint mentions a two-time Olympian who recently began training in a new sport, the modern pentathlon. "She's great at swimming and running," Vint says. "Decent at shooting and equestrian. But in fencing, she's terrible." Being a good fencer means being able to read subtle cues from an opponent's body and foil position — something fencers normally pick up over years of practice. A perceptual- training program, Vint theorizes, could accelerate that learning curve, transforming his protégé from zero to Zorro.

On the last evening of my AIS visit, I watch a volleyball team practicing attacks: setting the ball, then hammering a spike down on opposing blockers. The reverberating balls in the nearly empty gym create a constant, explosive cacophony. David Ferguson, one of the team's more powerful hitters, is an enormous 25-year-old in bright blue shorts with a frighteningly large rump. When he spikes the ball, it sounds like a cannon going off.

Last fall, the volleyball team worked on spike defense using the occlusion goggles for six weeks, cutting out the view just as the ball was hit. Knowing that you are going to lose sight of a large ball traveling 80†miles an hour in your general direction has a remarkably concentrating effect, says 19-year-old Will Thwaite, a lanky 6'10" blocker. Like the rest of the team, Thwaite practiced with the goggles two or three times a week. "I think it helped," he says. "When I played before, I mostly just reacted. But when you get to this high level, the ball travels so fast. You really have to anticipate." As I watch, one of Thwaite's teammates blocks a close- quarters Ferguson spike at the net so solidly that the ball boomerangs back at an astonishing speed.

Thwaite's coach, meanwhile, has added another twist. Since the players are getting better at reading serves, he has also quietly begun teaching servers how to hide their intentions.

Inexperienced volleyball hitters tend to telegraph their hits, says Vint, who has puzzled over these issues with Farrow: "If they're doing a quick set in the middle, they may stiffen their arms. If it's a back-set, they'll arch their back before the ball arrives."

The result has been a kind of athletic arms race, the ability to read shots driving a corresponding need for better fakes. When I point this out to Vint, he seems pleased. Like any advantage, perceptual training will likely upset the existing balance. But eventually things will even out. "In the long run," he says confidently, "I think the level of play will go up."

Maybe, but it's still a long way from awkward occlusion goggles to the effortlessly accurate no-look pass. Here in Australia, though, there's a sense of how this kind of training could change sports one skill at a time. Magic, after all, is just a collection of steps executed artfully. And while Gretzky may be hockey's Houdini, there's a lot to be said for starting out with some simple sleight of hand.

============ end article ============

Cheers... chris@ccc

 

That's an interesting article. However, I've gotta say that it's perhaps a little obvious (at least to me) that skilled sports people can make better predictions with less information. Still, it's nice to have these things quantified.

Wayne Young

 

Anticipation skills

This subject has come up a number of times with people I play against, cause my anticipation skills can border on uncanny.

I agree that anticiptation can be learned over time, but the ones who are very good (Gade for example) have an innate sense to begin with.

I've always had a great deal of difficulty trying to explain what is is that tips me off, but having dicussed it with Evylgrynn to great lengths, I can boil it down to three aspects"

1) Playing patterns

2) Body position (includes eyes)

3) Over compensation


Playing patterns is easiest to learn.

Can the person hit a back hand? Where do they hit their backhand when in trouble. Do they smash deep and charge the net? Do they smash down the line or mix it up? Can they hit deep or drop when in trouble?

Body position is little tougher and more subtle. Most people do look where they are going to hit and tend to force their body a certain way to hit a certain shot. Some people are very hard to read. Jeff White for example has a very neutral positioning with his shots. Most players will over tense when the smash, so when I see that the player has gone back with a relaxed set up, I tend to sneak forward. Also when someone drops their shoulder it's a good indication a drop is coming. Most people going cross court with a slice will lean into it, or when in scrambling turn away to make sure to get a good hard swing behind it.

Not trying to pick on him, but when Greg Bury does his no look on an overhead shot, I'm charging the net. This does not apply to net shots as he can do a no look flick. However when he does a no look, I know that soemthing is coming.

This above the toughest aspect to "teach" but if you have the instinct for anticipation - the easiest to refine.

Over compenstation - most people over compensate in some way so make a person "bite" on committing to the wrong shot. The obvious one is a trick shot or a fake like Gade or LCW and his inside out forehand net shot.

However, this also applies to simple shots. Greg Bury and Darryl Yung have a wicked flick shot where at the least second they angle their racquet such that their swing may be indicating one way, but the shuttle goes opposite. This type of shot was pulled a number of times on DarthHowie in our match at the C2 tourney. Only once did I not retrieve the shot, but the damange was done, it pulled me so out of position that they could isolate Howie at the back of the court. Greg Bury did this to Evylgryn recently. Again, it didn't results in a quick point, but is sure did pull us out of position.

Ardy gets pile of people on his over the head drop shot. What he does is over exagerates his swing that he his going to hit it long and then pulls it down. The last time I played I was waiting at the net for it on a number of occasions. However I cannot read his cross court smash. He sets it up so well as the attack clear down the line.

This type of deception is more about being able to hold your opponent until the last possible second so they can't anticipate. You watch a Lin Dan/ Peter Gade match. Whenever Lin drops his shoulder, Gade is at the net looking for the drop shot. Most the time he's right.

 

Interesting thread...

As an intermediate player too who isn't super fast, I have to agree that it came to me to start trying to anticipate my opponent's next move. However, I reached a point where I realized anticipation isn't yet the best thing to learn at this level.

IMHO, I believe it is more important to learn your own shots and how to improve them.
1. Learn how to spot holes and position your shots there.
2. Learn to position ur smashes. So many ppl just smash blindly and they realize afterthat they smashed right into the racket of their opponent who'll give them back a killing return.
3. Learn how to position ur drops too. Same as smashes.. don't just drop right into a guy who's waiting to kil you at the net.
4. Learn how to refine ur shots (clears and lifts) so that you dont put them out.

After perfecting those.. i believe then an intermediate player can start learning to anticipate. When you have those 2 abilities in your hands, u'll really start to feel how much u've improved coz only not you can anticipate and return ur opponents' shots, but u can return them in a way to put the game into ur favor.

 

From your shot you should have an idea as to what your opponent is likely to do. You too backhand corner he will likely clear along the line or if weak play a slow drop. You net drop, he will clear over you. You slow drop from mid/back of court expect a cross court net drop. ETC. trouble comes as your opponent sees you move they hit where you have just come from.

 

I agree that at an intermediate level, you are better off to work on consistency and general shot making. However at the intermediate level, seeing your opponents patterns are somewhat easier.

Most intermediate players only have a certian amount of shots in their arsenal and tend to play patterns - very obvious ones.

The easiest pattern is the backhand. Most players at the lower level and even many at the higher levels don't have a strong backhand. So what does your opponent do when pressed to the back hand side?

It is very simple start and you can build.

I'll use the recent grudge match I had with Evylgrynn. The background: Evyl had been training with a new coach and based on our coversations (and a tad bit of trash talk) I knew that his game and swing had changed. I wasn't going to be in the best shape due to my back, but my strokes were there. I had to end rallies quickly.

I knew that he was going to retain some old patterns and I had to establish what remained and what was new. So within the first couple of rallies, I put a couple attack clears and cross court flicks down the backhand side. Withina couple points played I knew that I've he had to actaully hit a backhand, he didn't have the power to push me backcourt, however he had a very solid over the head that he could put just about anywhere, but tended to go down the line with it. His bail out shot is now a cross court high clear. His going for kill shot when he has time is an inisde out (i.e cross court backhand to forehand) slice.


Pattern 1, 2 and 3 established.


Next coupel of rallies I send shots high to his forehand. I know deep down he still has the cross court slice in the bag. He doesn't uncork it at first, putting down several straight drops. Then the slice shows up. ( I lose the point)

What a minute - did he just step in/lean into that slice shot? High clear to his forehand side later in the rally. I see the lean - I'm standing at the net when that slice arrives.

Pattern 4 established.


In the meantime, I know Evyl is trying to figure what new shots I might have. He already knows I can dial in a bomb at anytime and my backhand is still consistent. I go down the line with most smashes and deep clear to his forehand with my backhand. I throw in a couple backhand drops to keep him honest.

Then I unload two shots. The first is what I refer to is a cross court slap drop. ( I won't bother to explain it here) The other is a back hand cross court slice. Don't think he's ever seen the first one and I was making sure he knew I could still hit the second one.


Now I had him thinking that I could hit almost any shot form anywhere. I'm trying to not show a pattern. The only pattern one is the smash - everyone knows it's coming, I simply try to hit it so hard Evyl can't get it.

Now there other smaller patterns I pick up on that fall into the body position catagory but that is ore instinctive and I don't always get it right. The main thing are the four patterns above that help win the first game.

Second game is different. Now I'm getting gassed and MY patterns are starting to show. Evyl throws a shot back at me that is new and he sets it up VERY well. It's a back hand net shot cross court that he sets up as a straight tumble.

Now I'm thinking I have to guard thats ide - my back hurts when I have to lunge that way and if i drop straight back Evyl makes me eat it.

I'm down 17-10 in the second. That's a big hole in rally point.

Then is finally dawns on me he's anticiptaing my smash returns at the net and doing the smash and rush. If I do manage to get it over, he's does another attack clear or flick down my forehand line.

It's bloody brilliant. I'm getting gassed so the shot is fast enough I can't get back to hammer it. If i go long and manage to keep it in ( hit two wide already) he's going to do that cross court drop for a point. I've been doing a straight drop in hopes I can chase it down.

So I do a different type of anticipation - it's a forced set up. I gave rathna that flick at the net I swing like I'm going long - then do a cross court half drop half drive. Point. Same thing again, I managed to get a slice cross court for a point.

Two quick point aren't going to bother him, he gets another point an it's 18-12. Okay ladles and germs, I are in deep ****.

Except Evyl has now backed off the net a bit. His next flick isn't as crisp - I scrape the roof with a clear deep to his forehand side. That doesn't seem like much unless you get into my dusty little brain and realize that shot was planned from the moment I quit coughing up a lung.

Based on his reaction and scrambling to get back, it was not shot he expected. I'll say that again, not a shot a shot he was expecting.

I don't see the lean and he's making a big swing. I'm already going back for the clear and swinging for the fences.

18-13.

After that Evyl, backed off the net rush. It allowed me to open up his side of the court again. I dug myself out of the hole and scraped out a win in that second game.


Now, conversely, Evyl did the same thing to me in the third game of our second grudge match. He picked up on my patterns and stomped me into the ground. When I'm tired, I can become very predictable.


So you can see from the above there are some insights into how I anticipate an opponent and work them to get them off your.

One of the hardest things for players to do is be able to switch styles. I wasn't able to do it until about five years ago and it took a bad knee for me to figure it out.


Cheers

Vining

 

Great reading winingwolff

A thing I've learned as well is to look at your own position at the court as much as the opponents possition, If you hit a drop/smash from the backcourt, and don't rush the net, you can most often expect a netshot. If you hit a crosscourt clear/lift that is a bit short, most likely your opponent will smash due to your position in the court. You can somehow predict the next shot from your own position.
Remember basic singles tactics, especially the one about keeping your opponent moving.

 

i almost always look at the shuttle....cuase people are good at lying....i mean people are good at deception... my friends can turn his body one way but the shuttle goes the other way...as for me....the one mistake my opponent always makes is when i jump as if im gonna make a jump smash say at the mid-right section of the court...he assumes im gonna him it towards him....but i crosscourt drop it .... we humans are good at deceptive body language(especially girls,but thats a whole different story)

 

ya i know how u feel. My coach at school made me play against one, and god dammit his strokes were deceptive, i couldn't get a point, but i want to play him again, since i had already played 2 teachers before him without rest. But i've never really tried to anticipate players of high skills during a game, cuz at that point everything becomes instinct, something i need to fix i think.

 

just thought I'd add my two cents, from the other side of my grudge match with Vining....

not being very speedy, I also have to anticipate. using the grudge matches as an example, from experience playing with and against Vining, I know his main strengths (smash and backhand) but I havent seen him play for years, so I'm thinking there's some new things that I havent seen. I'll use the second match since Vining has already gone through the first match (plus I won the second match)

first game, I'm pumped up since I feel I have something to prove. Vining has already blasted me off the court in the first two games, so this time I up the pace-everything is a fast shot-fast drops, fast clears, quick smashes, etc.

This is so Vining does not have time to set up his power shots, I have found that the best way to counter your opponent's strengths is simply to not give them time to hit their best shots. sounds simple right? easier said than done. Another thing I know is that my fitness is a little better than Vining's, partially due to his back so I want to make the shots quick but the rallies a little longer.

anyway, I start with the serve. anytime I hit a high serve and it is not right to the back, Vining is going to pound it into the ground, and anyone who knows Vining knows that against his smash, all you can do is guess. NOT a good strategy. so I switch to the short doubles style serve. I try moving it around-serve to the T, serve to the outside, etc. I quickly find on the forehand side Vining almost always hits straight-straight drop, straight drive, so I'm usually waiting for it to smash or drive crosscourt. After this happens several times Vining starts to press with his service return to that side, and I get several free points as he dumps them into the net. on the backhand side, I keep the serve to the T, I tried a couple to the outside, and Vining made some nice pushes deep to my backhand, and killed my return. When I serve to the T, I have a better chance to use the around the head shot to cut off the return.

second main thing, I know from the first 2 games that Vining does not like cross court shots so I try to use more of these. I can usually hit pretty close to the lines with my crosscourt smashes so I hit lots of these, and usually get a straight return which I can jump on. This strategy seemed to work as I won this game.

the second game, I deviated from the strategy a bit, I got sucked into playing Vining's power game which he plays much better than me. Vining was leading by 4 or 5 points, when my legs started to cramp up. Vining quickly realized something was wrong and started going for the kill-deep clears to the back followed my quick drops to make me run as much as possible. I decided to end the rallies quickly and save myself for the third game, Vining won the second game.

in the third game, Vining graciously gave me some time to stretch, but I was very sore by this point so I had to end the rallies and game quickly. In this game I went back to the short serves to the outside on the forehand side, to the T on my backhand side.

I also realized that Vining was getting tired, as his shots-especially his back court shots were becoming more predictable. Vining has a very long swing, which makes it somewhat easier to anticipate what he is going to do. Oddly enough when he is going to smash, I can usually tell he is going to smash, but I have no idea where he is going to hit it. Most of Vining's shots are straight, and I start moving him front to back-when I can hit a good punch clear, especially to the forehand, I am almost always getting a straight return which I hit crosscourt. also when Vining is not set up behind the shot it is usually a straight drop, which I can then push crosscourt. I managed to win the third game using this strategy.

This is a very specific example, but generally when I play I try to always keep pressure on my opponents-even if they have excellent shots they can break down under pressure. The main thing is to figure out what your opponent does not like, and keep doing it until they figure it out and counter it, then switch styles. much easier said than done, since they are usually trying to do the same thing to you!

Cheers

 

My two cents,

Anticipation, more often than not, is dependent on your skill level. If you observe professionals , you will see many patterns. eg. Lin Dan almost always, after low serve, he will move to the other side of court to cover a straight return. He can do that only because, he is confident about his skills to cover any other return (cross court net/ lift to back etc)

There are many proven tactics-after a well executed fore hand smash to opponents back hand, it is a good idea to to advance to straight mid court/net. Chances of a making a kill is very high. You might miss the odd good lift, but it is a good percentage chance to take.

There are some player whom you can read/predict very easily. There are guys who almost always plays a week backhand clear or more often than not, drops close to the net from a high attacking position. I would suggest don't change your game to suit weaker players. Hold your position as and how you might do against a stronger player.

If you anticipate and change your base, your focus should be on covering the unexpected returns. When I toe in on the service line to intimidate the opponent when they make doubles low serve, my focus is on covering the flick serve. In fact, I am inviting them to try the flick when I stay too close.

 

It's quite a complex question. Hence let's go straight to Advanced/Professional players level and ask ChatGPT...LOL:

 

In a game against a strong player, you can try to mentally guess the likely answer, but no more. If you try to make a move before hitting an opponent, he will immediately play a counter-move. Moreover, strong players specifically delay the strike phase in order to force the opponent to start making a move, and then they immediately play in the opposite direction - they "throw" the opponent. Therefore, in a game with such strong players (who like to cheat), at the moment of his blow, you need to "stand still" and concentrate on the shuttlecock.

 

Can you clarify the cheat comment?

 

I think it can be translated to deceive.

Sent from my SM-S918W using Tapatalk

 

Yes, that's right!! Exactly so! - "Deceive, cheat, mislead"
Online translator sometimes lifts the mood!))

 

When I anticipate a shot and move early, only for my opponent to hit it somewhere completely different, I think to myself: "You lied to me"

 

Once you step on court in a badminton match, it's like a war zone. War is always based on deception.
If both opponents know where each player is hitting exactly every time, then it makes the whole game meaningless like a sparring or warm-up session.

The only way to be able to anticipate early and better is through lots of focused training and match/tournament experience by getting good coaches and play with the best players who have a variety of strokes and are known for highly deceptive play.

Once you have seen through all kinds of such deceptive strokes whether at the net, flick serve, flick drives, etc. it becomes a very normal forming part of your footwork with ability to control the game better with counter strokes.

Many times, many points are won not just about using obvious trick shots but creating a certain pace of your strokes and style of hitting to frustrate your opponent into making mistakes.

By using a certain kind of stroke play at a certain frequency (timing of shots), it can frustrate your opponent, even top ranking players into losing without knowing what hit them. IMO, this is the highest form of deception.

Such kind of stroke play which appears deceptively simple is best demonstrated by Emil Holst who beat Lin Dan at the 2017 German Open like a walk in the park (literally).

Lin Dan seemed to be sucked into Emil Holst's slow motion stroke play like on weed, which can be torturous for a fast player..: