Tennis Pro decoded opponent's body language and serve?
November 10, 2021 9:46 AM Subscribe
I read an article about a tennis pro who decoded his opponent's body language to predict which way the serve was going to go. The other tennis pro had a tricky serve that was really hard to overcome. So this pro watched hours of video and finally noticed the other player moved his head in a certain way when he was going to do the tricky serve. Anyone remember which article or interview this was?
Andre Agazzi's autobiography is an excellent read ... IIRC, it is consistently voted as one of the top sports biographies of all time.
posted by Melismata at 11:24 AM on November 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 11:24 AM on November 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
I recall another / different story, that I thought was perhaps in a David Foster Wallace essay, but my googling has argued that I might be wrong there. But the story was that the author had spoken with a retired tennis player(?) or coach(?) who could determine if a player was going to fault or not before they served, but this person couldn't identify what they were seeing -- they could tell, but couldn't articulate HOW they could tell.
Can anyone place this story?
posted by misterbrandt at 1:51 PM on November 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Can anyone place this story?
posted by misterbrandt at 1:51 PM on November 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
misterbrandt, I think that was in Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink. Vic Braden, maybe, was the coach, and he was watching a woman on TV?
posted by Caxton1476 at 2:25 PM on November 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Caxton1476 at 2:25 PM on November 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
ah, yes. Thanks!
posted by misterbrandt at 2:32 PM on November 10, 2021
posted by misterbrandt at 2:32 PM on November 10, 2021
There's a story about baseball batters facing off against professional softball pitchers. They found they were terrible at hitting softball pitches. The thing is, the human nervous system just isn't fast enough to react to the pitch once it's left the hand. To hit a baseball, and evidently also a professionally-pitched softball, you need to be able to read the pitch as it's being thrown. This takes a lot of practice and experience that isn't transferable between baseball and softball.
So the story here is rather typical of any fast-paced sport... you don't get anywhere until you can anticipate what your opponent is going to do. The unusual thing here is just that he was aware of doing it and, perhaps, how. But it's also possible (and in my opinion even likely) that he just thought he understood how he was doing it and what was going on was actually something preconscious and completely different. Because we're really good at making up stories to explain the things we do after the fact.
posted by sjswitzer at 3:18 PM on November 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
So the story here is rather typical of any fast-paced sport... you don't get anywhere until you can anticipate what your opponent is going to do. The unusual thing here is just that he was aware of doing it and, perhaps, how. But it's also possible (and in my opinion even likely) that he just thought he understood how he was doing it and what was going on was actually something preconscious and completely different. Because we're really good at making up stories to explain the things we do after the fact.
posted by sjswitzer at 3:18 PM on November 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
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posted by AgentRocket at 9:50 AM on November 10, 2021 [14 favorites]