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New tennis technology a game-changer?

Shad Powers
The Desert Sun
Each stroke can be reviewed with the PlaySight system.

Tennis player while drinking a paper cone of water after a practice session: "Wow, that felt good. My backhand was on fire. All of them in. All of them deep. Nailed it."

Tennis coach after same practice session: "Actually, you only hit 78 percent of them in and only 53 percent of those were as deep as we'd like. Here, check the video."

That's the future of tennis if the company PlaySight has anything to say about it, and with high-octane backers such as Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Pete Sampras and Novak Djokovic, it might.

Oh, did I mention the player was in Indian Wells and the coach was in Miami?

PlaySight hooks up a SmartCourt, which they've done at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden on practice courts 7 and 8 as well as courts at all four Slams, with multiple cameras and multiple data-reading devices. At the side of each court is a video terminal that looks like an ATM machine. As the player practices, the cameras are capturing everything he or she does. Then, at any point during the practice session, immediately after it, or later on a smart phone, a player can analyze the data, see video of every shot, and see if what they are working on is paying off. It's all run through social media, too, so the player, coach or anyone whom the player has invited to their cloud, can see the data and video on their phone from anywhere.

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Other similar technologies exist, but it's the immediacy of this one that separates it, and you don't need to have a human being working the cameras or culling the data. And as tennis quickly joins the rest of the sports world in looking at deeper metrics and data, such technology is becoming more and more useful.

Legendary tennis coach and current Tennis Channel Paul Annacone, who coached Pete Sampras and Roger Federer, recently joined on as a special advisor with PlaySight and he is a believer.

"That's what's really exciting for a coach is to be able to say 'Here's what's going on. Here's what I'm seeing let me show you,'" Annacone said. "In the 90 seconds while they're drinking some water, a coach and player can sit down and put some visual behind some numbers, which is really impactful.

"I'm a big believer that there's always a 'why' behind the numbers. And this is one of the first pieces of software I've seen that can help anybody whether club player or tour player with the explanation of the 'why' behind the number."

Players seem to be finding the data valuable, as well.

Kiosks on PlaySights' smart courts allow players and coaches to review plays.

“You can go back and watch it later online with the video footage," American pro Ryan Harrison said. "It allows you to break down every single shot, every shot that was in, tracks the speed of your serves, calls the lines for you.”

All the player has to do is input whether he or she is left-handed or right handed, and the cameras do the rest. In other words, it can tell if the shot you hit was a backhand, a forehand or a serve — just by your body position — and where the ball lands. Then every stroke you take during your time on the SmartCourt is immediately available to sift through or to see video of. PlaySight says 25,000 players of varying skill levels are using the technology and the app right now.

"For example, if you want to look at all the backhands you hit that went in, you can pull those out and see only those backhands that were in as each stroke is available," he said. "And then if you want to play video of one particular backhand that went in, you just tap it and it comes up. And again, this all happening live during your drill, so a coach or a player doesn't have to wait until it's over. At any point they can go over to the kiosk and watch the video."

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It's not just for pros and pro events. The two courts will stay active at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden 365 days a year. Club pros and juniors can use it, too. The hope for PlaySight, too, is that the social media aspect of it will be attractive to kids. They can tweet or send a serve they hit, or backhand they ripped to their friends, all through the app.

But at its core, its best and primary usage is for the coach-player relationship.

Annacone said if the technology existed back when he coached Sampras or Federer it would have changed the way they worked out. At the same time, though, he said he wouldn't want a player of his so inundated with numbers and data that they forget about the actual tennis.

PlaySight cameras video the action on practice court 7 and 8 at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden on Thursday, March 10, 2016.

He said it's a useful tool, though, and would be a valuable ingredient to the coaching recipe, but not the whole pie. Just like only hitting a bucket of balls is.

"For example with Roger a few years ago, we looked at video and patterns and what's successful and why and I would show him the statistical stuff, but I wouldn't sit down with him in front of a screen and go through a million things," he said. "You have to be careful about how much information you're dispersing and why. You can go out there and hit a bucket of balls, and that can be impactful, but you're also limiting yourself. If you just go out there with a  spreadsheet and 25 numbers, you're limiting yourself, too. It's about combining the two. It's really exciting to see where it goes from here."