World number three Rafael Nadal has got a new high-tech racket that looks and feels like his old one, but has got an on-off switch that enables sensors embedded in the handle of the racket to tell him where he hit the ball -with the help of an app.
Nadal's 'smart racket,' the latest advance in tennis technology, has got sensors, made by Babolat, which record technical data on every ball struck. And at the end of a match or training session the data can be downloaded to a smart phone or computer and used to help analyse a player's strengths and mistakes.
Aside from the sensors, the racket is just a racket, with the same size and weight as Nadal's old-fashioned former racket, Sport24 reported.
Nadal, who raced through his first-round Australian Open match over Mikhail Youzhny on Monday, said that he knows to play well he needs to play 70 percent of forehands and 30 percent of backhands.
The former world number one said that if he is not doing that, he knows that he is not doing the right thing on court. He claimed that this racket is a way one can check these kinds of things.
The 14-time Grand Slam winner was sidelined for much of last season from a wrist injury and an appendix operation.
The International Tennis Federation had previously outlawed what it calls player analysis technology during competition but adopted a new rule in January last year that allows players to wear or use smart equipment, like Nadal's new racket and devices like heart-rate monitors that record data about player performance in real time.
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Babolat initially fitted the technology into its 'Pure Drive' rackets, which are used by Karolina Pliskova, Julia Goerges and Yanina Wickmayer and then incorporated the sensors into a newly released version of the 'AeroPro Drive' racket used by Nadal, Caroline Wozniacki and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
However, players would not be seen analysing their game mid-match on their iPhones as an ITF ban on coaching during matches prevents players from consulting the data on court, the report added.