Better with your left hand? - New findings on handedness in professional tennis
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Better with your left hand? - New findings on handedness in professional tennis
A new study by the Universities of Kassel and Münster shows that left-handers no longer have an advantage in professional tennis. Sophisticated match preparation has neutralized the so-called left-handed advantage.
It wasn't so long ago that parents used to put the toy in the right hand of small children who were reaching for a building block with their left hand. Today, most people know that there is no such thing as the "bad hand". On the contrary: scientists have proven that players who hit with their left hand in sports such as tennis have a competitive advantage. Martina Navratilova, Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe were three left-handers who dominated the scene in the 1970s and 80s. In addition to their special talent, they were also helped by their playing style, which deviated from the norm and was not so easy for opponents to read. However, according to the latest findings, current world-class players such as Rafael Nadal no longer benefit from their left-handedness.
How the so-called left-handed advantage has developed in tennis from the 1970s to the present day and whether it still exists at all has not been addressed in research in recent years. Now Dr. Florian Loffing and Prof. Dr. Norbert Hagemann (both University of Kassel) and Prof. Dr. Bernd Strauß (University of Münster) have conducted a study to fill this scientific gap. The findings were recently published in the international open access journal PLoS ONE.
In the project on handedness in sport, which was funded by the German Research Foundation, the sports scientists analyzed data from the past 40 years on the success of left-handers in professional tennis. During this period, just under ten percent of all professional players played left-handed. Almost 19 percent of the players who topped the world rankings during this period were left-handed. However, the study suggests that the left-handed advantage is not fixed, but can be changed through professional training. For example, evaluations in men's tennis from the 1970s to the 1990s showed an increase in the proportion of left-handers with a better ranking in the respective year-end world rankings. However, this correlation could no longer be established in recent years.
The findings show for the first time that the disadvantages players have when confronted with a left-hander diminish the more professionally they are able to prepare for the matches. Even today, many players still find it unpleasant to compete against left-handers because they have different, less easily comprehensible movements. But the professionalization of the world's top players has contributed to the fact that left-handers no longer have any demonstrable advantages at this performance level," emphasizes Loffing, who completed his doctorate in sports psychology under Strauß.
This means that players and coaches develop an individual match plan for each game - whether against left- or right-handed players - that takes into account their own strengths and weaknesses and those of the opponent. The opponent's style of play is literally 'dissected' before the game in order to be able to act or react in any situation that might arise during the match. If a match against a left-hander is coming up, the team looks for a suitable training partner to simulate and practice the game situation," explains Loffing. At the top level, it is no longer possible to think about or even develop a new strategy during a match, emphasizes Hagemann: "Tennis is too fast a sport for that. Players have to internalize sequences and strategies beforehand by practicing them thousands of times so that they become automatic. The researchers agree that these practice effects are also effective against left-handers.
In a follow-up project, the sports scientists want to test whether their findings on the lack of a left-handed advantage in professional tennis can also be transferred to other sports. We believe that the speed of the sport is a decisive factor. In table tennis, players have to act and react even faster than in tennis. We therefore assume that it is difficult to neutralize the left-handed advantage despite intensive training," explains Strauß.
Incidentally, the research team has to disappoint all right-handed amateur tennis players. Anyone who had hoped that left-handers would no longer have a noticeable advantage over their opponents in amateur sport is wrong. The three researchers also investigated this aspect with amateur players. Although the effect is neutralized at the top of the world as a result of increasing professionalization, left-handed players still seem to enjoy a performance advantage in amateur sport.
Loffing F., Hagemann N. & Strauss B. (2012). Left-handedness in professional and amateur tennis.PLoS ONE 7(11), e49325.
The article is freely available at the following link: