Table Tennis – Keeping Your Eye On The Ball

Watch the ball – what does this mean?

To start with, when we tell ourselves or someone else to watch the ball, what do we actually mean? I would suggest that when most of us say this, we are talking about watching the ball closely from the time our opponent hits the ball until it hits our own bat. I’ll start with this definition and talk a bit more about other aspects of watching the ball later.

Is it good advice?

So is this the right thing to do? Until recently, I myself was of the opinion that it really wasn’t necessary for a player to watch the ball right onto his bat. My reasons were as follows:

• Provided you have watched the ball up until it is a couple of feet away from you, the ball shouldn’t be changing in its direction or flight enough to matter.
• It is more important to be watching the opponent and what he is doing, in order to plan where you are going to hit the ball.
• Your peripheral vision is good enough to keep track of where the ball is, and allow you to make contact.

Of late, however, I have changed my mind. What started me thinking was when I was searching for photographs on the ITTF website to use for my articles, and I noticed photo after photo of the professionals looking closely at the ball just before and during contact. I’ve included some of these photos down the left hand side for you to see for yourself. Note how carefully the pros are watching the ball in each case.

Seeing what the pros do got me thinking more about whether my reasons were as good as I thought. With further analysis, I came up with the following counter-arguments to my old way of thinking.

• A table tennis ball is a light object, and it’s flight is easily affected by gusts of air or the spin on the ball. Watching the ball onto the bat is the best way to make sure your bat goes to exactly where the ball is, not to where you think it should be!
• The sweetspot on a table tennis bat isn’t all that big – you need to be watching the ball closely in order to make sure you hit the ball in the sweetspot and not the edges of your bat.
• Professional table tennis players do it, so if they need to, we probably need to as well!
• Your peripheral vision may not be all that good for watching a fast moving table tennis ball onto a relatively small racket head.

And this is why I now tell my juniors (and myself) to watch the ball right onto the bat.

Other points to look at (if you’ll pardon the pun!)

Don’t focus exclusively on the ball

You must watch the ball closely, but don’t ignore everything else. You need to be aware of what your opponent is doing, or else you are likely to hit a great shot right to where he is waiting for it.

Peripheral vision is still important

You should still be using your peripheral vision when hitting the ball. Just make sure that you are using it to get an idea of where your opponent is moving to and where he may be vulnerable. Your peripheral vision should be much better at locating a far away slow moving large opponent in relation to a static table tennis table, than it is at tracking a close up fast moving table tennis ball in relation to yourself, who will probably also be moving.

Demonstration

For those of you yet unconvinced, or trying in vain to convince your students, try this little demonstration exercise. Stand at one end of the table and watch the net closely. Then have another person stand to your forehand side and randomly (but reasonably slowly) move their hand up and down. See how easy it is to tap their hand while still watching the net. Then try it while watching their hand and see the difference.

Stop watching the ball!

Just thought I would throw that in to see if you are still paying attention. Although I do mean it, in all seriousness. Once you have hit the ball yourself, there is not much point in watching the ball closely to see where you have hit it – it should hopefully be going pretty much exactly where you want it to go. You would be much better off switching your attention to your opponent and what he is doing, so you have an idea of what shot he is going to play next and where he is going to hit it.

Overview (Sorry – I can’t help myself!)

So in fact, I would recommend that your focus should change as follows. Once you hit the ball, you should be watching the opponent closely up until the time he makes contact with the ball. Then you should be watching the ball closely up until the time you hit it. Once you have hit the ball, you should go back to watching the opponent again, until he makes contact with the ball, and so on.

Conclusion

As you can see, there’s more to this watching the ball issue than just looking at the ball like a seagull eyeing a chip. So the next time you take your eye off the ball and miss it completely, don’t just yell at yourself to watch the ball – but keep in mind just when to watch it closely, and when to focus on your opposition. After all, when’s the last time you heard someone yell – “Watch the opponent”?