We develop an impact representation for the generalized distribution amplitude which describes the exclusive hadronization of a quark–antiquark pair to a pair of mesons. Experiments such as γ∗γ→ππ and γ∗N→ππN′ are shown to probe the transverse size of the hadronization region of the quark–antiquark pair that one can interpret as the transverse overlap of the two emerging mesons. An astonishing feature of this description is that low energy ππ phase shift analysis can be used for understanding some properties of quark hadronization process.