An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
Daniel Nestor is a retired Canadian tennis player who was known mostly for doubles. He ended his 18 year professional tennis career in 2018. In 2010, Nestor was the subject of a Tennis Channel “Bag Check” segment. The contents of his tennis racquet bag were eclipsed by an appearance of his (then) infant daughter and a tour of her diaper bag. Still, there was one subtly useful item for recreational tennis players.
Over the past couple of weeks the USTA has sent an inordinate number of email messages to its membership heralding the imminent arrival of the World Tennis Number. For anyone who has ever bothered to register with the ITF, the World Tennis Number is already here. It appears on the ITF player profile page. In order for that to work, the ITF has to be able to receive information from all its member organizations in some standardized format. That is where the Tennis Open Data Standard (TODS) comes in.
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The ATP and WTA tours have partnered to create a new app that provides tennis schedules, scores, and news. I loaded it to my phone over the weekend for a test drive and instantly fell in love. All serious tennis fans should load have this app loaded on their mobile devices. It make it so much easier to watch and follow professional tennis on both tours.
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My tennis racquet bag tends to run on the heavy side because I carry a lot of gear onto the court that might be needed during a match. I also keep a lot of things in the back of my car that could be essential situationally or in between matches. Today I am providing a glimpse into the items I have at the ready as well as my system for organization.
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The body is a complex system. Reflecting on aches and pains experienced before and after my recent foot injury has brought me to a new realization. It is highly likely that physical indicators were visible in my court movement and stroke mechanics for some time prior to my current injury. It is possible that artificial intelligence video analysis systems might soon be able to identify biomechanical breakdowns and warn of potential significant injury. I think this could happen within the next decade.
A data and analytics research group will soon release a paper that studies momentum swings in tennis. “Live Counter- Factual Analysis in Women’s Tennis Using Automatic Key- Moment Detection” uses machine learning to predict how certain events in a match will play out before they occur. The paper defines some new metrics for tennis that could potentially extend the state of the art of analytic data analysis in tennis.
The SwingVision artificial intelligence tennis training application is primarily designed to work directly on a smart phone. That implementation puts tremendous analysis power directly into the hands of the players and enables immediate feedback. However, the use of a smart phone during a USTA sanctioned match is prohibited. Additionally, many players may be reluctant to drain their phone’s battery in a tournament setting. Fortunately, SwingVision can import data captured from an alternate device. I recently tested out that functionality and was very pleased with the results.
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The “Cone Game” is one of my favorite tennis practice drills. It is a great development tool because it gets the players into an Zen-like focus that is still layered with the pressure of competition. I recently used the SwingVision during a practice session that included the Cone Game and was very happy with the results. I continue to be completely enamored with the SwingVision application and service.
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I finally got around to trying out SwingVision and was very impressed with the results. In fact, I immediately applied to be a brand ambassador for the product. I am absolutely kicking myself for not trying it out much sooner. As a strong proponent of video analysis, any technology that reduces the workload required for meaningful review is transformational.
The Billie Jean King Cup (formerly the Federation Cup) Finals was conducted in Prague a couple of weeks ago. One of the first time innovations was near real-time data analytics provided to each team. The technology was a collaboration between Microsoft, the Billie Jean King Cup Finals, the International Tennis Federation (ITF), and other coaching experts including Billie Jean King herself.