How technology and innovation can benefit tennis players

Additionally, Martin was the former Director of Sports Performance Analytics for the Los Angeles Lakers and former Director of High Performance for an MLB team. In her spare time, Martin is a sports performance consultant to multiple professional athletes in the NBA, MLB, and on the ATP tour, integrating her physiological and statistical knowledge to optimize the athlete’s performance and reduce the risk of injury.

The sport of tennis has long been known as being stuck in a “data dinosaur epoch” in terms of incorporating analytics and innovative technologies, but with time, comes change and evolving ideas that lead to innovation. Finally, the sports analytics revolution has reached tennis.

We now have the ability to reap the benefits of innovation in technology for tennis performance. Many top players and coaches have started taking an in-depth look underlying the player’s tennis game. It has now gained enough interest at the most elite levels, such that it is more frequently being incorporated into a tennis player’s training alongside other components such as strength and conditioning, physiotherapy, nutrition and psychology. 

For instance, we know that Novak Djokovic has shown interest in analytics, while Andy Murray ascribes to wearable technology. Specifically, the interest is in devices that can capture data using GPS, accelerometers, magnetometers and gyroscopes. The purpose is to track movement, distance, speed, and other key performance indicators that can translate into a player’s match performance over time.

Many think of tennis as a sport where you hit the ball and run to return the next ball. Although that is the foundation of the sport, there is much more that lies beneath the surface—no pun intended. For example, knowing where the next shot will be hit. If your opponent is pushed out wide, cross court, what is the probability that they will take the risk to go down the line? Discovering these patterns, and realizing how a shot, and the return of that shot, can predict an opponent’s next move is easily identified through analytics. 

Equally important to the ability to maximize performance through the implementation of sports performance analytics is the ability to minimize the risk of injury. Many sports scientists say that they can prevent injuries—but what we can do, statistically speaking, is examine factors evidenced to contribute to injury and provide insights that allow coaches and players to make data-driven decisions to modify and optimize their training and recovery with these aforementioned goals in mind.

Identifying how much load an athlete can place on their body before it starts to break down is critical to staying healthy. In basketball, this is taken into consideration by monitoring minutes played. In baseball, for pitchers in particular, this is monitored by the number of pitches and innings. Load management is such an integral concept in baseball that Major League Baseball players are on a five-day rotation. Why? Because of the enormous load placed on the shoulder and elbow, throwing a ball over 90 mph. Although we keep tabs on the speed of serves and the placement in tennis, few have mentioned the number of serves hit in the time span of an entire tournament, or the “clay-court season,” or the entire year. 

If sports analytics are incorporated correctly, they can even contribute to extending an athlete’s career.  Currently, we are seeing that many professional tennis players are now playing until their late 30s and early 40s. If analytics were to play a more prominent role in their routines, we would become even more surprised by how athletes would exceed previously normalized limits