Visual Behaviours of Expert Padel Athletes When Playing on Court: An In Situ Approach with a Portable Eye Tracker

Abstract

Eye-tracking research has allowed the characterisation of gaze behaviours in some racket sports (e.g., tennis, badminton), both in controlled laboratory settings and in real-world scenarios. However, there are no studies about visual patterns displayed by athletes in padel. Method: The aim of this exploratory case study was to address the visual behaviours of eight young expert padel athletes when playing match games on a padel court. Specifically, their gaze behaviours were examined with an in situ approach while returned trays/smashes, serves, and volleys were performed by their counterparts. Gaze patterns were registered with an SMI Eye Tracking Glasses 2 Wireless. Results: The participants’ gaze was mainly focused on the ball-flight trajectory and on the upper body of the opponents because they were the two visual locations with a larger number of fixations and longer fixation time. No differences were found in these variables for each type of visual location when the three return situations were compared, or independently of them. Conclusions: Padel players displayed a similar gaze behaviour during different representative return situations. This visual pattern was characterised by fixating at the ball and some opponents’ upper kinematics (head, shoulders, trunk, and the region of arm–hand–racket) to perform real interceptive actions while playing against them on a padel court.

PADELVIC: Multicamera videos and motion capture data of an amateur padel match

“…Most of these analyses require, or could benefit from, positional data about the players and the ball. Indeed, the ball-flight information and the upper body of the opponents (head, shoulders, trunk, and the region of armhand-racket) were the two most relevant visual locations for experienced padel players because they made larger number of fixations and longer fixation times at these sources of information when returned three representative situations performed by their counterparts (trays/smashes, serves, and volleys) on a padel court (Espino et al, 2023). Although other types of information (e.g., the contextual information as opponents´ tendencies, weakness of the counterparts, etc.)…”