Tech upgrade for amateur tennis lovers soon

Professional tennis players competing in Grand Slam tournaments can call on the Hawk-Eye camera system to instantly review up to four disputed calls each set. Now, an even more advanced system by Israeli startup PlaySight Interactive Ltd is catering to amateurs - and could transform tennis instruction as we know it.

Developed by former Israeli Air Force engineers and endorsed by Novak Djokovic and Billie Jean King, PlaySight records footage via five strategically placed cameras and then slices and dices it for instant analysis.

"There are a lot of similarities between pilots and tennis players," says PlaySight Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Chen Shachar, who in May raised $3.5 million from a group of investors that included Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, and Mark Ein, CEO of Venturehouse Group. "Individuals in both pursuits operate without coaching for long periods of time under physical and mental duress."

Just like a flight simulator, PlaySight uses auto-tagging software to track every "event-based decision" - or, in tennis terms, stroke. Want to review all your down-the-line backhands? Done. The software recognises all such shots, tags them and serves them up for review at a courtside kiosk, where you can zoom in, watch in slow motion or toggle among camera angles. And because PlaySight automatically uploads its video and data to the cloud, you can replay your heroics on your smartphone, tablet or PC at your leisure.

Video-led lessons
How useful is all this footage for your average amateur?

"I've stopped talking during lessons," says Gilad Bloom, a coach and former Association of Tennis Professionals Top 100 player who recently installed the system at The Club of Riverdale in the Bronx, New York, one of 50 or so facilities that PlaySight has wired to date. "I let them hit a few balls, and then we go look at the screen. They say, 'I'm not bending my knees.' I tell them, 'I know; I've been telling you that for three years!'"

Janet Balakian, a Tenafly, New Jersey-based founding partner of Third Coast Capital, took up tennis at the nearby Bogota Racquet Club last year. When her club installed PlaySight, she immediately noticed a difference.

"The other day, my instructor told me I was waggling my racket head," she says. "I was able to correct it after seeing it on the monitor, and for the rest of the day, I was hitting the most beautiful backhand."

Bad calls
Bloom says another potential benefit is the system's ability to eliminate bad calls.

"Imagine, in a few years, when every point at every tournament, from juniors to college to club tennis, can be replayed by a line judge with an iPad," he says.

Shachar expects his company to install 100 systems in the US this year, at around $10,000 each; international expansion will begin in earnest next year. Stefan Edberg, a former world No 1, was an early customer for his Swedish tennis institute, Ready Play, and Roland Garros Stadium (home of the French Open) and the esteemed Queen's Club in London have since followed suit.

"It's the wave of the future," says Manuel Diaz, head coach of the men's team at the University of Georgia, which installed PlaySight before hosting the National Collegiate Athletic Association championships in May. "All the schools were checking it out," he says.

Instant analytics
Prior to PlaySight, the university relied on Fribourg, Switzerland-based Dartfish for its video needs. Diaz would film his team's matches, overnight Dartfish the DVD and wait for the company to return a new DVD with the analytics included.

Professionals such as Roger Federer don't have it much better. During Grand Slam events, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) - a perennial sponsor - provides athletes with DVDs containing footage and analytics. Unlike PlaySight, however, neither Dartfish nor IBM's system allows you to review, say, only your aces; you have to wade through the entire match hunting for them. PlaySight is also the only service that tracks the speed of each shot, its height over the net and its depth.

A software update scheduled for later this year will allow the system to track a ball's revolutions per minute. In theory, that means players will be able to compare different rackets and even string patterns to see how they affect spin.

Of course, just because players have access to PlaySight's intel doesn't mean they'll suddenly be dropping 120-mile-per-hour (193-kilometer-per-hour) serves into the corners of the service box.

"But when you can see where the ball lands," Bloom says, "you can work on your weaknesses and try to increase your percentages. One of the most-boring aspects of practice becomes fun."