Andy Murray Wore a Bra During Schroders Battle of the Brits

Tennis Technology Tuesday

As I was watching “Schroders Battle of the Brits” a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that Andy Murray was wearing what I assumed to be a back brace during one of his early matches. I was trying to figure out the exact nature of his new apparent ailment before I noticed that all the other players were also wearing the same device.

Unless every other player at the event was experiencing the exact same back problem, there had to be an alternate explanation. Naturally, I started to wonder if the male sports bra had finally arrived. With a nod to the classic Seinfeld episode, such a device would be called the “Bro.”

Through fortuitous on camera shirt changes, I eventually gleaned a complete product name off the device. “Catapult.” That was enough information to lead me to the manufacturer. Later in the event, after one of the cameras timbered over, a focused close up of on one of the wall mounted Catapult sensors was shown. I think maybe the camera operator thought it was also a camera.

In any case, the product is the Catapult “Clear Sky” athletic monitoring system. The UK Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) has installed it in the indoors facility at the National Tennis Centre (NTC) where the Schroders Battle of the Brits was conducted. The system pairs permanently mounted sensors with player wearable technology to collect and report training and (in this case) competition performance data.

As a fun personal fact, shortly before the dot com bubble burst I did some engineering consulting work for a wearable technology startup. We were struggling to find a viable use case. The company was struggling to find a committed investor. The technology was super raw at the time, but with so much potential.

The article that was published about the Catapult system installed at the LTA NTC is chirpy and superficial. It is hard to tell if the use cases for athletic training have come into sharp focus yet. Perhaps the LTA is playing their cards close to the vest on the true utility of the system.

I think it is also possible that Catapult and the early adopters are still working out how to actually leverage the data that the system is collecting. I am sure that a massive amount of information was collected during the Schroders Battle of the Brits. It is likely the best competitive data collected to date.

It is clear that the LTA has been using the system for a while to support player training before unveiling it this week. According to published articles, The Schroders Battle of the Brits was the first time that the Clear Sky system has been used in a tournament, albeit the exhibition variety.

I would observe that there is a section forthcoming within the ITF rules of tennis regarding player analysis technology. I am really looking forward to writing about it. As a bit of foreshadowing, I seriously doubt that we will see the Catapult system used in ATP or WTA tour events anytime soon.

In any case, the Clear Sky system tracks player movement with accuracy to a few millimeters. It also records speed, direction changes (agility), and cardiovascular data. This data can be used to calculate the “load” or overall physical toll that the match or training session imposed on the player’s body.

As for the use cases, the article asserts that the LTA is using the data from the Catapult system to help players and coaches optimize training. This moves the statement “you worked hard today” from a subjective coach assessment to something that is backed up by data. The LTA also claims to use it to assess player fitness and determine if a player is ready to return to competition after injury.

This isn’t something that a player can likely obtain or install on an individual basis, but I wouldn’t be shocked to see this system start popping up in other venues. The indoor facility at the USTA National Campus would be a likely spot.

Naturally, I would welcome an opportunity to see the system in action and to try it out for myself. To be fair, most likely it would confront me with factual data that I really don’t move all that well. It would have been super interesting to have “before” and “after” data points on my recently completed “Six Weeks” court mobility initiative, though.