Improve Your Anticipation — SS #23

Ever wondered how the top players always seem to be in the right place at the right time?

It’s as if before the opponent has even made contact with the ball, they’re pouncing in the right direction, moving, to borrow a Robbie Koenig phrase, “like a mongoose on amphetamines.”

It’s not luck.

It’s not magic.

And it’s not just speed,

It’s skill-based around reading your opponent’s cues and body positions.

And there’s a body of research that supports this. More experienced athletes are better at utilizing postural and situational cues to predict what their opponents are going to do next. This means that skilled athletes are able to read their opponent’s body positions prior to committing movements and understand where they are on the sporting field—in our case the tennis court—to better anticipate their opponent’s intentions. In other words, they can process small, seemingly subtle details and use them to anticipate their opponent's intentions in real-time

And with practice, you can learn to do this, too.

Postural Cue Utilization

So what does this big academic-sounding term mean? Put simply, it’s your ability to pick up on the tiny details in your opponent’s movements—this includes body position, footwork, or even how they’re preparing for their shot—before they actually hit the ball. This skill allows you to anticipate what they’re going to do next, giving you a fractional advantage to prepare your response.

This isn’t something elite athletes are born with by the way! It’s a skill backed by research across multiple sports. Studies show that experienced players can respond to these cues much earlier than their less-skilled counterparts. This finding has been replicated in tennis, squash, and badminton (Abernethy, 1990; Moore & Muller, 2014).

What do you need to take away from this as a tennis player who is interested in improving their court coverage and anticipation skills?

That the next time you see your favorite player defending or scrambling across the court, it’s not just that they’re incredible, world-class athletes, it’s that they’ve learned to read the cues of their opponent’s bodies! Does anyone come to mind? For me it’s Alex De Minaur’s incredible court coverage and movement skills.

With practice, you can develop this skill, too. Spend a few weeks trying to pay attention to your opponent’s body language, positioning, and movements—before they strike the ball. The more you pay attention to those cues, the faster and more automatically you’ll be able to anticipate their next movement. You’ll start to see familiar patterns, body positions, and tells.

Now the key here is that you have to experience this implicitly in open play. It’s no good if a coach is feeding you out of a basket because they’re in a stationary position, and are probably feeding you with a continental grip in unrealistic ways.

The goal is to get your brain to anticipate before you even realize you’re doing it—this comes with enough repetition in high-pressure scenarios.

Probability Assignment

Here’s the next part of anticipation: probability assignment. This is when you start predicting what your opponent is likely to do based on recurring patterns, maybe even context, and also positioning. It’s not just about reacting to the ball; it’s about understanding what’s likely based on everything that has happened on the court.

So the seminal research here is pretty old, but it shows that skilled performers have a hierarchy of probabilities that could potentially play out, which then helps them figure out the most likely outcomes. In tennis, this means you’re not just guessing but making educated predictions about where the ball is going next based on how your opponent has been playing and your past experiences. You’re not waiting for the perfect cue—you’re processing a ton of information in real-time to make a move before they’ve even hit the ball.

Want a real life example? Let’s say you have a weaker backhand than your forehand. You’ve noticed, over years of intense match-play, when you give your opponent a shorter ball, they have a tendency to hit to your backhand side—and sometimes they’ll approach the net. The next time you drop a ball short, you find yourself automatically—without thought—shifting over to cover your backhand because you’re playing the odds.

Skilled tennis players use contextual info like court positioning and potential shots to make quick predictions about where their opponent will send the ball next

Here’s the interesting part: even when you don’t have direct visual info—like when your opponent is far from the ball or you can’t clearly see their limbs—you can still make educated guesses based on the context. It’s all about understanding the bigger picture. Skilled players don’t just rely on postural cues; they read the entire situation, processing how their opponent’s positioning and previous shots influence what’s going to happen next.

Loffing and Hagemann (2014) demonstrated this by showing skilled tennis players’ expectations of shot direction are influenced by their opponent’s lateral court position and that this information influences players before their opponents contact the ball. Put another way, skilled tennis players factor in their opponent’s court positioning and are able to move and adjust before their opponent has even struck the ball.

It’s an important skillset because it shifts you from reacting to anticipating. With practice, you can start to predict where your opponent will hit the ball, not just by watching them but by analyzing and factoring in past decisions and your experience.

All of this indicates that though postural information is important in anticipating where your opponent is striking the ball and what they will do, that contextual information also plays into a skilled tennis player’s anticipatory skills. During the rally, when the opportunity presents itself, the best players don’t overthink—they rely on the mental models they’ve built from countless rallies and instinctively make split-second decisions!

Attacking Vulnerable Players: Help from Vic Braden

Now, instead of just talking about this in the abstract, I thought it would be best if we were to use some examples to give you an explicit understanding of what you should be looking in your opponent’s body language and position.

And for these examples, we’ll go back to utilizing cues from your opponent’s body (postural cue utilization). We are going to lean on the late, great Vic Braden’s Tennis 2000: Tennis for the Future, which is something of a tennis teaching bible to me.

Let’s work with the images below and imagine that we’re trying to learn how to approach the net when our opponent is compromised and use a “steal” volley more effectively.

What are the body positions that you should be looking for in your opponent?

N.B.: all images from Braden’s books. When I make a video of this newsletter, I might go out and take photos of myself but at the moment I just don’t have the time.

Stepping Across Their Body to Hit a Low Ball on Their Forehand

Take a look at the image above. If you see your opponent approaching this position, what are the chances that they are going to hurt you from there? Yes. It could happen. But you should learn to play the probabilities and sneak into the net here. Sure, they could get lucky and fluke a winner. Consistently? No. Otherwise they’d be on TV.

Stepping Across their Body to Hit a Low Slice

Underspin makes the ball stay in the air for longer period of time. If you get your opponent on the run, and they change to a continental, you should be sprinting into the net. Not only are they in a vulnerable position. They’re going to float the ball and also really going to struggle to hurt you from there. It’s a great chance to use your steal volley.

Moving Back, or Stepping Across their Body to Hit a High Slice/Backhand

Are you starting to see a pattern yet with the body positions that you should be looking for with your opponent? The similarities are: 1) compromised body position and 2) an open racket face. These cues upon which you should train your brain to attack the net!

What I’ve Told You Means Jack Sh*t

Now, I have given you a bunch of explicit information, having just covered Braden’s recommendations for when to attack the net.

This absolutely does not mean that you have made a change in your brain to where now that you’ve listened to this you will be able to react when you see your opponent in a vulnerable position automatically. No.

You are going to have to interact and experiment with this information on the tennis court, in your practices and in your matches.

And you can’t just work on it once.

If this is truly a skill set you want to add to your repertoire, that of taking advantage of your opponent when they are in trouble and sneaking into the net, then you’re going to have to practice it consistently for weeks at a time… and you’re going to have to practice it under realistic, challenging, and match-like scenarios with anxiety and pressure.

Additional Cues Based on Probability

The more specific and realistic you make your practices, not only will you get adept at reading your opponent’s body positions, but you’ll also start to get a sense of what your ball is doing to your opponent. And you can actually start to feel, as soon as the racket has left your ball, percentage wise what kind of ball you will receive next.

For example, let us say you wind up and absolutely cream a forehand into the corner… you see your opponent split-step late, they switch to a continental grip, and… what are you waiting for?

What are the chances that they can hurt you off the ball you’ve just hit and with the grip that they’ve shifted to? It’s time to make a move. And you’ll learn to do all of this in a fraction of a second.

Building Anticipation… the Long Game

Learning to anticipate your opponent’s next move through postural cues and probability assignment isn’t something that happens overnight. But with consistent practice in realistic, match-like situations, you’ll begin to recognize patterns, body positions, and tendencies that give you a major advantage on the court.

Whether it’s reading a late grip change or understanding your opponent’s court positioning, the ability to act proactively, rather than react, is what separates the good from the great. It can be the difference between being stuck at the 3.5 NTRP level and moving on up.

And here’s the best part—this skill is trainable. Every time you step on the court, you have the opportunity to refine your ability to anticipate, respond faster, and play smarter. Start small by focusing on your opponent’s movements, practice this in high-pressure, realistic scenarios through the use of constraints, and gradually integrate these skills into your game.

And when you’re ready… 👇🏼

References

Abernethy, B. (1990). Expertise, visual search, and information pick-up in squash. Perception, 19(1), 63–77. https://doi.org/10.1068/p190063

Moore, L., & Müller, S. (2014). Transfer of expert visual anticipation to a similar domain. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67(1), 186–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2013.798003

Loffing, F., & Hagemann, N. (2014). On-court position influences skilled tennis players' anticipation of shot outcome. Journal of sport & exercise psychology, 36(1), 14–26. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.2013-0082

Disclaimer: I can make mistakes. I intend to share the best information possible with tennis players to help you with long-term improvement so that you can push past plateaus. If you research what I’ve spoken about, or if you’re an expert in these areas and you feel I’ve gotten anything wrong, please get in touch. I am more than happy to issue a correction if required.