Uncorrected Proof Asian J Sports Med. 2023 March; 14(1):e126591. Published online 2023 March 2. https://doi.org/10.5812/asjsm-126591. Review Article A Review of the Essential Visual Skills Required for Field Hockey: Beyond 20-20 Optometry Thabile Sneyimani 1 , Musa Mathenjwa 1 , Lourens Millard 1, * and Gerrit Jan Breukelman 1 1 Department of Human Movement Science, University of Zululand, Kwazulu-Natal, Republic of South Africa * Corresponding author: Department of Human Movement Science, University of Zululand, Kwazulu-Natal, Republic of South Africa. Email: millardl@unizulu.ac.za Received 2022 April 23; Revised 2022 December 12; Accepted 2023 January 06. Abstract Context: Field hockey is a very technical and tactical sport, requiring immense levels of visual concentration on moving and station- ary targets, which can improve visual and team performance. However, in literature, this area of specialty remains underutilized, with most studies seeking to improve physical and physiological performance. Essential visual skills cannot only be attributed to field hockey but to other ball-playing sports and activities of daily living, which allow humans to coexist. The essential visual skills reduce the propensity of making poor decisions, ill preparations, and the exclusion of potent and capable players. Objectives: This review novelly aims to not only compile a comprehensive list of essential visual skills for field hockey players but also to create a starting point for future studies to add to this list, to aid in player talent identification, and eventually create sport- specific visual exercise programs and testing batteries. Discussion: The skills identified in this review preface a platform for human performance professionals to include in their train- ing regimens, with an intent to maximize performance and talent identification and to aid in the formulation of visuospatial test batteries. Even though this list is comprehensive, this is only a starting point for future research to find more visual skills that are essential to field hockey, as well as provide the opportunity to develop the performance of the visual skills of these athletes in ways that have not been done before. Keywords: Visual Skills, Sport Vision, Field Hockey Vision, Vision in Sport 1. Context Vision is a fascinating aspect of human existence that aids with visual memories, color identification, and the in- terpretation of visual stimuli resulting in images formed at the retina, which provides a “20-20 optometry,” or per- fect vision (1-3). Citizen scientists utilize vision in activities of daily living, such as driving automobiles, signage inter- pretation, photographic memory recalls, and performing house or work-related responsibilities (2). The main objec- tive of vision in sports is to improve visual physiology and sports performance. To date, it is recorded that vision plays an integral part in sports performance, which enhances psychological, perceptive, and physical abilities (1). Vision is an important aspect of field hockey as it provides play- ers with perception, the ability to perform sports-related drills, synchronization between eyes and playing limbs, and also providing action upon the perceived stimuli (3-5). Visual skills in field hockey simplify an athlete’s life by per- forming tasks such as target identification, scanning of the opponents’ playing style, player positioning, reaction to audio-visual signals such as pointing where a ball should be played, and most importantly mastering the hand-eye coordination (6-10). During the execution of a shot, the player executing the shot has to have a peripheral aware- ness of who’s behind him or her. As such, the stroke player will also need to have a good speed of recognition of how fast the player is intended to receive the ball and how much force the ball should be hit with in order to be received by the intended recipient (10-13). Field hockey is a technical and tactical sport comprised of eleven players on each side, which requires a great deal of visual expertise in reaction time, hand-eye coordina- tion, ball speed judgment, opponent eye gazes, and cen- tral and central and peripheral vision (4). The game is played on a rectangular surface which is 91,4 meters long and 55 meters wide, which is divided into areas such as a 25-yard line, pitch boundary, penalty spot, striking circle, goal post, and penalty corner landmarks, that require per- fect visual skills in intercepting the opponents’ offense (4, 14). Areas such as the penalty corner and striking circle require players to have good hand-eye coordination with the ball and bat; in the process, must utilize opponent eye Copyright © 2023, Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.