Menu
Download the app

SBJ subscribers – Enhance your experience with the revamped iOS app

Tech

Starting at Love: How SwingVision Helped a Tennis Novice Make Improvements Thanks to Immediate Data and Analysis

SportTechie senior writer Joe Lemire used the tennis tracking iPhone app SwingVision to receive detailed shot analytics and video highlights in hopes of improving his game on the court.SportTechie's Joe Lemire via SwingVision

SportTechie’s Sandbox is where we share our experiences testing products, gear, solutions and more in the sports tech space. Have something you want us to get our hands on? Pitch us at talkback@sporttechie.com.

* * * * *

Tennis balls were a big part of my childhood. They were versatile—a soft alternative for backyard baseball, a bouncy ball to throw off the wall, a centerpiece for an imaginative new contest—and, in our family, they were abundant. My mother’s cousin was a longtime tennis teaching pro who kindly gifted us bags stuffed with a hundred tennis balls.

Still, to this day, I always keep at least one tennis ball in my car trunk where it sits waiting for me to break the proverbial glass in case of emergency. One recent morning, with no preceding greeting or context, I texted my brother, “Do you have a tennis ball in your car right now?” He replied immediately, “Always.” We hadn’t discussed this topic in at least a decade, but he later added verbatim what I would have said, “You never know when a game of something might break out.”

Our tennis balls were not, however, commonly used for tennis. Our mother would take us to a local court once in a while, but we gravitated more to other team sports. Still, I always wanted to learn. In college, I took a P.E. tennis class in hopes of developing passable skills, but the instructor was an undergrad—a talented player who wanted to be the cool teacher who just let us play games instead of practice drills.

The key roadblock for me was an inability to consistently hit a topspin forehand. Good baseball swings create backspin for better distance; topspin is anathema to that sport and thus not part of my muscle memory. But it’s a rudimentary tennis skill that, because I lacked it, impeded my interest in pursuing the sport when I was reasonably capable at several others.

When Apple invited me to join a group of reporters and try out iOS tennis tracking app SwingVision, I happily accepted, in hopes that such a tool could help me pick up tennis. SwingVision uses computer vision from an iPhone or iPad to provide detailed shot analytics and automated video reels. It is an official partner of Tennis Australia, the UK’s Lawn Tennis Association and the Intercollegiate Tennis Association; Tennis Australia led its $2 million seed round with retired tennis stars Andy Roddick and James Blake also investing.

Upon grabbing a racquet at Long Island City’s Court 16—the world’s first LED-lit, glass-floored tennis courts, produced by ASB GlassFloor—I stared down my natural enemies, the net and opposing baseline. Compounding matters for someone who routinely hits long is that these courts are 60-feet long, instead of the standard 78, as they are largely intended for youth development.

SwingVision’s head of community engagement, Tamir Dossiea, was my appointed instructor for the afternoon, and he started lightly hitting a few balls my way. An iPad Pro was stationed on a tall tripod at my back, capturing the full court through the SwingVision app. The result of my first forehand was predictable: way long and wide. (I circled the ball in red.)

SwingVision cleverly uses the Apple Watch for a complementary experience. It’s an easy way to track basic workout metrics like heart rate and distance covered, but that’s hardly unique. What is helpful and novel is its assessment of your tennis stroke. By placing the watch on your dominant hand, it can capture data on wrist movement and hand speed, making it a helpful reminder of proper stroke technique. (With a paid subscription, the Apple Watch can even be used to challenge line calls—with a quick wrist tap, SwingVision will analyze in or out and help quell arguments.)

Dossiea provided helpful advice—breathing, it turns out, is something many novice players forget to do while swinging a racquet—and I felt a bit more comfortable by the end of that session. Nothing would replace repetition, though. SwingVision CEO Swupnil Sahai kindly offered to send me one of his company’s fence mounts. I arranged to borrow a Slinger Bag ball machine that my colleague Andrew Cohen had received. I paid for a permit to my town’s tennis courts. And away I went.

Setting up my phone on the fence behind the court was easy, with the SwingVision app on the Apple Watch showing a picture of the camera view to help orient and calibrate it. The Slinger Bag was straightforward to use, too.

Topspin forehands were not so intuitive, unfortunately. Most of my forehands that first day that landed in were either tentative and slowly struck or hit across the court but flat. SwingVision computes shot placement and renders a spray chart, showing my distribution—85% to the middle or cross-court third and only 14% down the line, of which most are shown as having been hit flatly.

Here’s a representative sample of those early forehands, all of which will surely make Nick Bollettieri shudder. But I can share these videos with you, kind reader, in our little circle of trust, okay?

Over a half-dozen solo training sessions—the Slinger Bag can be set up to deliver a reliable ball for consistent practice—I showed notable improvement. Not every Sandbox story will culminate in 80-plus mph fastballs in hallowed big league venues; I certainly wasn’t smacking similarly paced forehands at Arthur Ashe Stadium this time around. The middle schooler whom I saw play on a nearby court a couple of times would surely have beaten me in a match. But progress has to start somewhere.

The average pace of my shots increased. I felt more confident spreading shots around the court. And I might be able to sustain a reasonable rally with an average tennis player—so long as my opponent never hits to my backhand.

In order to really reach a passable level on my local suburban courts, I’ll need a coach. SwingVision’s AI provides some suggested drills, but I’d need more targeted counseling. SwingVision plans to incorporate that into the app, perhaps by 2023: let users share their data and videos and receive individualized feedback from a coach working remotely.

And having the objective shot metrics can help: as Tennis Australia’s head of innovation, Machar Reid, told me last year, the sport is “rich on instruction, low on feedback.” That’s what made SwingVision an appealing investment to democratize that data in a scalable way.

But Reid noted that it wasn’t just for the junior player with high ambitions, saying, “I think it appeals to a 40-year-old playing, who just wants to get more information on their games, much like the prosumer does in cycling or golf.” My milestone birthday isn’t until next year, but otherwise, it’s like he was talking about me.

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2022/09/21/Technology/swingvision-tennis-tracking-app.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2022/09/21/Technology/swingvision-tennis-tracking-app.aspx

CLOSE