Vision in tennis and padel: anticipation, gaze and visual training, what 67 studies say

In brief. In tennis, the expert returner reads the server's body before impact, and his eyes get ahead of the ball toward the bounce. Video training of anticipation improves in the laboratory and sometimes on the court, in small trials; only two trials measure an effect in matches. In padel, three studies. 67 studies analyzed, inventory updated on November 3, 2026.

Hello to you, the movement professional,

Céline Triolet and colleagues video-coded situations from professional tennis matches to measure the delay between the opponent's stroke and the response of the defending player. Beyond 140 to 160 milliseconds after contact, the response always aims at the right side: the player is reacting to the ball. Earlier than that, he is sometimes wrong, he is anticipating. These anticipated responses cover only 6.14 to 13.42% of the coded situations, and almost all occur when the opponent has taken the tactical advantage (Triolet et al., 2013). Picture the player pushed back behind his baseline, who sets off before seeing the ball because he has no choice left.

Hence a paradox: in the laboratory, the expert guesses the direction of a stroke well before impact, in a match he only commits early under constraint. The serious objection comes right away: anticipation training trials rarely include more than thirty players, and only one followed a ranking based on matches. Should we train the eyes, the reading or the decision?

Anticipation in tennis: what occlusion and eye tracking measure

Anticipation, here, means predicting the direction, depth or type of an opponent's stroke before the ball leaves. Temporal occlusion cuts a video at different moments around contact; spatial occlusion masks the racket, the arm or the trunk to find out which region carries the information. Eye tracking records where the eyes land. The criterion is often accuracy and reaction time.

These methods hold up on the court: the conclusions remain broadly the same with progressive occlusion or a moving window, and with a prediction on paper or an actual return on the court (Farrow et al., 2005). Masking a cue and deleting it from the image are not the same thing: deletion lengthens reaction times and produces atypical visual paths (Mecheri et al., 2011). And the more realistic the display, the better the prediction (Loffing et al., 2011).

What the expert returner reads on the server's body

One of the first findings comes from Université Laval, in the late 1980s: on two films of 27 serves, expert returners seem to take their cues from the general body position during the ritual phase, then from the racket during execution (Goulet et al., 1988). The ball toss and the arm-and-racket region carry most of the anticipation of the serve, and the more expert the player, the better he can say what he uses (Jackson and Mogan, 2007). Skilled players combine several body regions, but it is by disturbing the arm and racket that they lose the most (Williams et al., 2009).

Context matters just as much. Unlike novices, skilled players exploit the position of the hitter on the court, especially when the kinematics tell little (Loffing and Hagemann, 2014). The sequence of previous shots improves prediction (Murphy et al., 2018). In extended reality, in two experiments of 32 participants, the gaze shifts toward the opponent's preferred serving zones, all the more as the ball is fast, then the real trajectory corrects this first estimate (Beck et al., 2025).

Where the tennis player's eyes go: fixations, predictive saccades and the bounce

On the court, high-level players make better returns than intermediate ones and fixate the ball longer before the bounce (Sáenz-Moncaleano et al., 2018). In 43 players, the best ranked have longer fixations and less variable visual search (Murray and Hunfalvay, 2017), a study whose second author is affiliated with an eye-tracking company. On 1,020 returns by 17 players, the gaze identifies the returner with an area under the curve of 0.953, but the quality of the return with only 0.667 (Rosker and Majcen Rosker, 2021). Each player has a visual signature, which the most experienced adjust to each server.

The instruction "keep your eye on the ball" does not describe what the eyes do. In 23 novices in virtual reality, a predictive saccade leaves just before the bounce in two thirds of trials, aimed several degrees above the bounce point; the head then realigns the gaze laterally, and the eyes vertically about 100 milliseconds after the bounce (Mann et al., 2019). Tennis experience makes them more accurate, even in front of a video (Taya et al., 2013). In squash, in real play, predictive movements are "extraordinarily precise" according to Hayhoe and colleagues, who link them to internal models of ball trajectories built through experience (Hayhoe et al., 2012), an idea close to predictive motor control. Under acute physical fatigue, 24 players make fewer successful returns and multiply shorter fixations (Deng et al., 2025), which echoes the question of movement under fatigue.

Visual functions and the tennis player's brain

On a battery of seven visual tests, tennis players beat triathletes and non-athletes in speed discrimination, with no attentional advantage (Overney et al., 2008). Among 74 people, only the 19 tennis players have a smooth pursuit gain higher than that of sedentary people and gymnasts, while all the athletes trigger their saccades faster than sedentary people (Ceyte et al., 2017).

In the expert, anticipation activates the superior parietal cortex, the inferior frontal gyrus and the cerebellum more (Balser et al., 2014a), in proportion to performance (Balser et al., 2014b), which points back to the motor planning of the parietal cortex. His sensorimotor rhythms desynchronize earlier, with no difference in the posterior alpha linked to attention (Denis et al., 2017), and his early visual attention engages faster in front of an approaching object (Wei et al., 2025). These cross-sectional studies do not separate what tennis has built from what selected the players.

Training anticipation in tennis with video: the trials since 1998

In six players, filmed serves cut at contact and replayed faster and faster precede a better return on the court, with no control (Scott et al., 1998). Recreational players trained by video simulation, instructions and feedback improve in the laboratory and on the court against a placebo and a control (Williams et al., 2002). In young players, only the implicit group, which predicted direction on cut video without receiving a rule, improves on the court test, and the effect disappears at 32 days (Farrow and Abernethy, 2002). The reanalysis of these data reverses the conclusion: groups unequal at baseline, explicit group also improving, gains retained (Jackson, 2003).

In 33 young players, explicit instruction, guided discovery and free discovery all beat the control, but under anxiety the explicit group drops off (Smeeton et al., 2005). Random practice gives better retention at seven days and faster decisions on the court than blocked practice (Broadbent et al., 2015), through the error processing it imposes (Broadbent et al., 2017a): contextual interference applied to perception. In 27 randomized seniors, perceptual-cognitive training beats technical training and no training in match situations (Caserta et al., 2007). In professionals, only the group trained against the test opponent improves (Triolet and Benguigui, 2024). Slow motion does not immediately improve the anticipation of 18 players (Fukuhara et al., 2018), and in 105 players stereoscopic video lowers accuracy, while simply wearing 3D glasses shortens response time, a placebo effect (Liu et al., 2017).

Virtual reality, lights and visual programs in the tennis player

A virtual reality tennis environment was judged representative: the footwork of groundstrokes there is often that of the real court (Le Noury et al., 2021). The only randomized trial that follows a competition ranking, in 23 juniors in Prague, adds a cognitive program on headset and tablet: the UTR rating rises by 0.5 against 0.02 (p = 0.008), and the authors call for replication (Anguera et al., 2025). All four authors declare a link with the program's publisher. The meta-analysis of racket sports, six trials, gives g = 0.78 with a prediction interval of -0.01 to 1.57 that includes no effect, and only one perceptual-cognitive trial (Liu et al., 2026). Virtual reality and sports decision-making have their own satellite article.

In 15 children aged 7 to 12, six weeks of reactive lights come with progress in reaction time and stroke accuracy, clear especially before age 10, with no control group, and the authors attribute the change in reaction time mostly to growth (Forni et al., 2022). In 31 players and coaches, digital depth training brings the response time to the finest target from 3.9 to 1.6 seconds, with no control or tennis measure (Kutzner et al., 2022). A twelve-week visual training trial in 20 juniors reports effect sizes of 1.7 to more than 2 on the second serve and on the delay between the small lightening hop (split-step) and the shoulder rotation (Bonato et al., 2020). Caveat: the trial registry (NCT03233685) declares 30 participants included, recruitment open to both sexes and Stroop test reaction time as the primary outcome; the article publishes 20 boys and tennis outcomes, which the registry classed as secondary.

Training inhibition through visual search (Ducrocq et al., 2016) or working memory for ten days (Ducrocq et al., 2017) improves a tennis task under high pressure. In ten collegiate players, neuromuscular work under cognitive load improves postural stability, not jumps or reactive agility (Porter et al., 2024).

Vision in padel and squash: gaze, strobe training and mental fatigue

Padel has three studies. Eight young experts equipped with an eye tracker in a match mostly watch the ball's trajectory and the opponent's upper body, on smash, serve or volley (Espino Palma et al., 2023). In 20 competitive players, a warm-up with stroboscopic glasses makes volley accuracy plummet while wearing them (d = 3.14), then makes it a little better than after a normal warm-up (d = 0.52, p = 0.041), with no clear effect on reactive agility (Vera et al., 2026). Two of the authors are editors of the journal. In 61 recreational players, six weeks of padel interspersed with short Stroop tasks make strokes faster and more accurate under mental fatigue than in controls (Díaz-García et al., 2023). No study in the inventory trained anticipation in padel.

In squash, on film, 16 experts predict better than 20 novices, and only experts read the opponent's arm before contact (Abernethy, 1990a). On the court, the distribution, order and duration of fixations do not differ: the expert looks at the same place and gets more out of it (Abernethy, 1990b).

From laboratory to court: what transfers in tennis, what does not

Near transfer, progress on the trained task, is the rule: depth on screen, lights, prediction on video. Intermediate transfer, on a test played outside competition, exists for specific video training (return against a server, decision time on the court) and, in the short term, for the padel volley after a stroboscopic warm-up. Generic visual programs, for their part, fail against a placebo and a control in 40 young participants tested for racket sports: neither vision nor motor skills improve beyond familiarization with the tests (Abernethy and Wood, 2001). Far transfer, in matches, rests on two trials: seniors in match situations (Caserta et al., 2007) and a UTR ranking with a conflict of interest (Anguera et al., 2025).

Facing a ball machine, returners trigger their movement faster and lengthen their stroke preparation compared with a real server (Carboch et al., 2014). This is the argument of representative design and of perception-action coupling: reading is learned tied to the action it triggers. Two researchers even propose measuring anticipation in real interaction rather than on video (Cañal-Bruland and Mann, 2025). The whole question of transfer to the field is replayed here, at the scale of the eye.

Links between the studies

A. Mark Williams co-signs a large part of this literature: Williams 2002 and 2009, Smeeton 2005, Huys 2008 and 2009, Cañal-Bruland 2011, Triolet 2013, Balser 2014, Murphy 2016 and 2018, Denis 2017, the three Broadbent papers, and a study where anxiety costs efficiency more than accuracy (Cocks et al., 2016). Replications therefore often come from one and the same network. Neighboring sports have their satellite articles: oculomotor skills in table tennis and vision in badminton.

Anticipation in tennis: what remains to be demonstrated

Established: the expert predicts the opponent's stroke better and earlier by reading the arm, the racket, the whole body and the context; his eyes get ahead of the ball toward the bounce. Debated: that video training produces a lasting gain on the court, with groups of six to thirty-three players, contested retention and replications coming from a single network. Extrapolation: that generic visual programs, lights, depth or on-screen cognition, win points. Nobody can promise you that a player who reads a video better will return better in a match, all the more so as the quality of his return is poorly predicted from his gaze.

A prediction makes it possible to settle this. If a randomized trial in ranked players compares, at equal volume, video training of return anticipation with extra play, measures points won on return in an official match at two months, and finds no difference, the idea that reading the serve can usefully be trained off the court falls. That trial is still missing.

Glasses, lenses and assessment: the eye doctor before visual training

In 73 soft tennis players aged 10 to 13, those with normal vision perceive depth and the periphery better than those with a refractive error, corrected by glasses or not; dynamic acuity and eye movements do not differ (Chang et al., 2015). The study is cross-sectional and the corrected group has eight players, but the optical baseline is checked before any reading work.

Before any visual work. If your athlete reports double vision, persistent blur, headaches during effort or dizziness, visual training waits. He first sees an ophthalmologist, then an orthoptist in France, or an optometrist in Switzerland or the United States. LabO RNP is neither medical nor paramedical, and comes in addition to a course of care, never in its place. LabO RNP works with optometrists; the curriculum was built with them.

The return of serve, a complete perception-action loop

The eyes are a point of entry. What LabO RNP teaches is the whole sensorimotor loop: how what the athlete perceives organizes what he does. On the return of serve, reading the toss, the adjustment step, the foot contact and postural control follow one another within the same fraction of a second. For the eyes in the warm-up, read our article on oculomotor exercises in the warm-up; for all the families of training, the map of the evidence in sports vision.

Vision, tennis and padel: answers to coaches' questions

Should a tennis player keep his eyes on the ball until impact?

The studies describe a gaze that jumps ahead of the ball. In 23 novices in virtual reality, a saccade leaves just before the bounce, a few degrees above the bounce point, then the head and the eyes share the realignment on the ball (Mann et al., 2019). In high-level players, a longer fixation of the ball before the bounce goes with the best returns (Sáenz-Moncaleano et al., 2018).

How do tennis players anticipate the opponent's serve?

They read the ball toss, the server's arm and racket (Jackson and Mogan, 2007) and weigh the context, such as the opponent's preferred zones (Beck et al., 2025). In professional matches, truly anticipated responses remain rare (Triolet et al., 2013).

Can a tennis player's anticipation be trained?

On the tests, yes: cut video, guided discovery and random practice improve anticipation in the laboratory and on the court (Williams et al., 2002; Smeeton et al., 2005; Broadbent et al., 2015). The trials remain small, and the only one-month retention test is contested (Farrow and Abernethy, 2002; Jackson, 2003).

Do reactive lights or virtual reality improve tennis play?

Reactive lights come with progress in 15 children, with no control group (Forni et al., 2022), and two generic visual programs do no better than familiarization with the tests (Abernethy and Wood, 2001). In virtual reality, six racket trials give a mean effect whose prediction interval includes no effect (Liu et al., 2026); the only ranking gain comes from a trial of 23 juniors run with the program's publisher (Anguera et al., 2025).

What do we know about vision in padel?

Three studies. Experts' gaze mostly follows the ball and the opponent's upper body (Espino Palma et al., 2023), a stroboscopic warm-up slightly improves the volley after the glasses are removed (Vera et al., 2026), and cognitive tasks slipped into training preserve the stroke under mental fatigue (Díaz-García et al., 2023). No recorded trial has trained anticipation in padel.

Does a player who wears glasses see depth less well?

In young soft tennis players, depth perception is poorer with a refractive error, even corrected (Chang et al., 2015), in a small sample. The first person to see remains the ophthalmologist, then the orthoptist or the optometrist depending on the country. LabO RNP is neither medical nor paramedical, and comes in addition to a course of care, never in its place.

On the return of serve, the ball is first read in the server's body, and it is on the court that you check what the video has taught.

👉 I want to learn to connect what my athlete sees to what he plays.

By the LabO RNP team

Method. Inventory of 92 studies of tennis, padel and squash built on November 3, 2026 from PubMed and LabO RNP's reading notes. The 6 studies without a PMID are set aside; 66 are retained for their direct link with anticipation, gaze and visual training, plus one controlled trial of generic visual training for racket sports (Abernethy and Wood, 2001), making 67 studies analyzed. Each PMID and each DOI was checked on the PubMed record on November 3, 2026. The trial by Bonato et al. (2020) is cited with a caveat linked to its registry.

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