Badminton players need to have a strong capacity for anticipation. The mechanism of anticipation is, however, unclear. In particular, there has been little study of anticipation in practical competition. This paper explores the anticipated stroking time point of a player and his or her stroke, based on an experiment examining data from eight badminton players at different levels of ability. A small nine-axis wireless motion sensor recorded these players’ variation in stroke acceleration during competition. Result found that the players with greater skill made earlier judgments about of stroke and drop. In addition, it is possible that expert players made their predictions based on the accelerated speed changes of the racket during the transition from backswing to fore swing.
