By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
Virginia Tech men’s tennis coach Jim Thompson didn’t hesitate for a second when he was asked how the installation of PlaySight video and analytic technology at his tennis courts in Blacksburg has affected the performance of his team this season.
“It’s been fantastic,” he exclaimed. “We put it in in January and we had our best season ever. I’m not sure it’s a direct correlation but I definitely think it helped us all year long and we’re excited about it. It’s been great for lots of reasons.”
PlaySight’s SmartCourt technology is rapidly changing the way tennis is enjoyed and coached, being installed in over 40 top facilities around the world in the last 12 months, including Roland Garros in Paris, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York, Queens Club in London and the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in California among others. The affordable and proprietary technology provides players with professional real time (and post session) match statistics, analytics, line-calling and video. The system uses five HD cameras and automatically classifies and tags all the events that take place during a session without the need for court-side operators or wearable sensors. Players can watch selected events (e.g. every backhand down the line that went long), with no need to watch the whole video or manually tag it. PlaySight is also able to record 3D tactical game management information including the height of balls over the net, speed of every shot and the depth of balls hit within the court. The SmartCourt is easily operated by players through a courtside kiosk and all video and data can be shared within seconds with coaches, friends and family at remote locations. Players can also track distance covered and calories burned during a match or practice session. Each player’s activity and motion during the entire match/training are automatically recorded, analyzed and uploaded into PlaySight.com – a social network for players/athletes where they can review their performance and share it with their coaches, friends and family.
Virginia Tech is one of a growing number of college tennis programs that have installed PlaySight technology for live-streaming and for analytic purposes to help with player development. Other top programs who have ordered and use the system are the University of Georgia, Cal-Berkeley, Harvard and Princeton, among others.
This season, Virginia Tech became a Top 20-ranked program for the first time in its history and finished the season with a 20-5 record, falling to No. 18-ranked South Florida in the second round of the NCAA Championships. Previously, Virginia Tech’s highest rankings were in the 30s and 40s but made a significant jump this year to become a top 20 program. Their season was highlighted by four match wins against ranked opponents by narrow 4-3 margins, indicating that a margin of just points allowed for the program to have unprecedented success.
Being able to have players learn subtle differences in their patterns and in strategies via PlaySight may have provided the slight margin for the Hokies to experience more victories. Thompson said that showing players specific PlaySight-provided stats such as the height of balls over the net and patterns of where balls bounce in the court, have specifically helped players improve weaknesses.
“One of our players, for instance, used to leave a lot of backhands in the middle of the court,” said Thompson. “His opponents were able to run around and hit forehands a lot. We talked to him a lot about it but when you can show him in a practice where all of his backhands landed and it’s the middle of the court, you start to see that a little bit more and then he had a different perspective of how he needs to work on it and he really made a great change there … for him not allowing the guy to have the ball in the middle to dictate to him as opposed to having the guy running to his backhand side a little bit more. So he started getting more backhands cross-court further. We had one guy, same thing on the forehand side, left it a lot in the middle, and didn’t realize it. I think it’s just a great way for them to see exactly what is actually going on and not what they think is going on.”
Princeton University is also one of the first college programs to install PlaySight technology on its courts. The team also has experienced one of its best recent seasons, qualifying for the NCAA tournament this year for the first time in 17 years.
“We had been in touch with them since they are headquartered just up the road in Tenafly (New Jersey) so we were very aware of them,” said Billy Pate, the men’s tennis coach at Princeton, said of its introduction to PlaySight. “We had been looking into live streaming of our matches. They came to one of our fall tournaments and told us of the live streaming and player development (stats) services. So we decided to kill two birds with one stone and get them both.”
Pate said the tennis program received a gift of financial resources from a university donor to allow the university to pay for the services. He said the stats – especially the flexibility of players to review the video of their matches and practices – and all of the data from them – in real time and on their own time has been biggest impact of PlaySight.
“During practice, there is focus there right off the bat,” said Pate of the live in real-time stats provided by PlaySight via it court-side kiosks. “Then the players are able to go home and watch the video on their computers on the their own time. Seeing the stats is really important.”
Can having your home courts wired with PlaySight help a college program in recruiting?
“I think that was part of the reason for getting it,” said Thompson of the recruiting advantage of having PlaySight. “I think a lot of players now going to college are trying to make a decision about where to go on where they can go and prove and make progress in their game. And I think clearly at Virginia Tech we can show where our players have been making progress for years. But I think this could potentially speed that progress up. If you have aspirations to play professionally I think this is where you want to come and learn on and figure out things about your game like this. As it evolves and we even get better at using it I think it will help players more and more. We definitely want to use it in recruiting. It’s something that, like you said, we have and a lot of schools don’t. I think, unfortunate for us, a lot of schools are going to get this because it’s really good.”
While Pate wishes PlaySight the best of success, he joked he’d be a little upset if other college programs sign up for the technology.
“We want PlaySight to do really well,” he laughed, “but we also want to have an advantage.”
