Watching and Seeing

I've never clocked the speed of a squash ball which would be revealing to attempt, but it is surely faster than the eye can see. Though I'm not deterred from trying. I have tried since my early days of lessons to practice seeing and most importantly tracking the ball. It is vital to see the ball leave the racquet and track it hitting the front wall noting the angle of impact and watching it travel towards the back of the court. Many players can't see it this well and resort to predicting the direction of the ball travel by looking at where the opponent must hit the ball from. The most commonly read shot is when a player is forced to play a boast from deep into the back corner. A strong player can dig out a high straight looping drive from there, but most players have to play a boast. The other common 'tell' for players at my level is a mid-court boast when the player is standing very close to the side wall. I fall prey to this shot every time. Usually I'm standing behind the other player and his body hides the ball as his racquet makes contact with it, but almost always when someone stands so close to the wall the boast is the only viable shot available to him. You can read this shot if you are looking at the position of the player. The drop shot is one of those obviously readable shots too, but it is commonly hard to read because of so many players having unorthodox forms. The way the shot is telegraphed is in the low knee bend and short back swing. The drop shot from the back court is worthy of mention because it is such a visible shot especially if you are in front of the player and you can see his short preparation and slow motion swing. I rarely will chose such a shot because it is so obvious to see, but there are players who use it against 3.0 players because they so often don't look back at their opponents and instead watch the front wall.

One important note about watching is staying put until you can clearly see the final trajectory of the ball. That means from the time the ball hits the wall and begins it's final path to the back is probably when you should have your racquet in the proper forehand or backhand preparation and begin to move your body and feet. Starting before risks over running the shot and starting any later means rushing and limiting your choices of returns.

Ultimately, to play well and show quick reaction, you must see the ball well. Needless to say this is the hardest part of any racquet game. Squash is played with a small ball that makes watching it consistently extremely difficult. For someone like myself, there are some common situations when focus fails me. One that afflicts many intermediate players is missing an overhead volley because of not recognizing the height of the ball as you watch it descend from high up. This is also true of returning a lobbing serve. The ball is not moving fast. In fact it is practically free falling and moves at the slowest pace of any rallies. But, that means you have to be practiced at maintaining track on the ball longer. The instinct is to hit it early and quickly, but that is often the mistake. You have to hold your shot until you can clearly see it come into position which in nearly all cases is a second later than you thought it would be. The corollary to this is the very low drop shot. Again it is critical to see the ball on the descend and clearly discern how close the ball is to the floor. To deal with this shot properly, you have to bend to stay as low as the ball drops to see it and hit it. You have to hit up on the ball and therefore you have to get under it to do so. Seeing this shot is more important than most shots demand.

I think everyone struggles against hard hitters because they hit the ball so hard and it travels so fast that one just simply cannot see it. I don't know any remedy to this other than practice your focus and concentration. I was just thinking how training your eyes with a white ball might help with that. It would be like jumping with ankle weights on you. You are forced to watch a more difficult target. When you go back to playing with a black ball against white walls, your eyes would do less work to see just as well. The second hardest tracking exercise is watching the ball move from one side to the other that requires you to turn your head 180 degrees. This is tracking those cross court drives. Using a ball machine to feed balls from side to side might be the best training for this one. This might be the last hurdle to playing well. A good player has to turn the whole body, move the eyes and turn the head in order to track the ball and move efficiently to it.