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Why Do Left-Handers Excel at Certain Elite Sports But Not Others? (theguardian.com)
Nicola Davis, writing for The Guardian: From cricketer Wasim Akram to baseball pitcher Clayton Kershaw and table tennis star Ding Ning, the world of sport has no shortage of left-handed players. But now researchers say they've worked out why lefties are overrepresented in some elite sports but not others. The study, published in the journal Biology Letters, suggests that being left-handed is a particular advantage in interactive sports where time pressures are particularly severe, such as table tennis and cricket -- possibly because their moves are less familiar to their mostly right-handed opponents, who do not have time to adjust. "The data suggests that the heavier the time constraints are operating in a sport, the larger the proportion of left-handers," said the study's author, Dr Florian Loffing of the University of Oldenburg in Germany. "We are less used to playing lefties, and [so] might end up in not developing the optimal strategies to compete with them." While it is thought that about 10-13 percent of the population is left-handed, it has long been noted that in certain interactive sports there is often a surprisingly high proportion of left-handers playing at elite levels.
It's pretty obvious what the left-handed advantage is when you have sports where lefties can compete directly against other lefties. In my own sport of fencing, lefties enjoy disproportionate success (close to 50% of world champions are left handed), and they are widely regarded as difficult opponents. But pit two lefties against each other and you will often get a shitshow of awkward, hesitant, and poorly-executed techniques, despite the fact that the tactical situation is identical to right-vs-right, the most common and well-understood scenario in the sport.
The reason is easy to understand - everyone, regardless of handedness, gets 85% of their practice against right-handers. Lefties are, quite simply, weird, even to other lefties. We don't get enough practice with them, we don't get the time to develop highly-trained "favourite moves" with them, and we don't ever enjoy the comfort and ease of familiarity. Our cognitive load is increased, and our reaction time is slower.
Unless you're lucky enough to have a left-handed coach, or a disproportionate number of lefties in your club to practice with. Or you simply stick with the sport long enough that the 15% of lefties you meet eventually adds up to a lot of experience.