WHAT TENNIS CAN LEARN FROM FORMULA 1


WHATTENNISCANLEARN FROMFORMULA1


Tennis has grown rapidly in popularity in the UK in recent years due to impressive form from Andy Murray which culminated in him becoming ranked World No.1 for the first time in the end-of-year rankings. With this growth, we’ve seen increased investment and with this has come more technology.


By Samir Abid, MBA, CEng


Tennis has been great at adopting technology. The way in which Hawk-Eye has been used to make judgement calls is way ahead of other sports. The first international football tournament to use goal-line technology, for example, came as late as Brazil 2014.


Hawk-Eye plays a big part in tennis matches, however, it gives no insight into what might happen. Its focus is purely on what


just happened. Data on second serve percentage, number of points won on first serve and speed and power are all useful insights, but how much value is this knowledge contributing to player performance? The result is coaches sat in a player’s box are unable to really add value mid-game. Tennis matches are played for a long time at a very high level, so I see a significant opportunity to optimise performance before and during the game in addition to after.


INTERNATIONALTENNISMAGAZINE March 2017 | 19 www.isportgroup.com/InternationalTennisMagazine


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