Turning Tennis Rackets Into Data Centers

When Paolo Palmero plays tennis, he knows his racket can improve his game, not by adding power and spin but by measuring them.

Palmero was among 50 applicants chosen this fall to test the new Babolat Play Pure Drive rackets with sensors that measure power and spin as well as the contact point with the ball. Players can download the data to smartphones or computers using Bluetooth or a USB port.

"It has given me a hard look at my game," said Palmero, 40, who lives in Manhattan and works at the United Nations. "It's a reality check."

The Babolat Play, which sells for $399, is the latest in a wave of racket innovation. Modest adjustments have been common in the past to increase sales of new models, but this year, more significant innovations have been made. Head introduced a material, graphene, meant to generate more power, and Wilson and Prince changed their stringing patterns drastically to generate more spin.

"The tennis market is changing," said Roger Petersman, Head's United States product business manager. "It's becoming more competitive, and consumers are smarter, so you need something new to grab their attention."

This month, the company introduced the $399 Head Custom Made, which allows consumers to select length, weight, balance, grip shape and material, and string pattern for their rackets. Each one will be customized in Head's Austrian lab.

"We know what the economy has done to retail," Petersman said. "People need a reason to change rackets. This is for people who want the best, are very particular and are not afraid to spend money."

Eric Babolat, the president and chief executive of Babolat, said his company's high-tech racket, 10 years in the making, went beyond individualization.

"This is not a new page, it is a new book," Babolat said, likening it to the way sound changed movies and predicting that all rackets would eventually be connected.

A new International Tennis Federation rule will allow the Babolat racket to be used during tournament play but will prohibit players from looking at the data during matches.

Babolat acknowledged the racket's weaknesses, including its difficulty in discerning a first serve from a second serve. The racket's timing mechanism and algorithms will eventually be adjusted, he said, and early adopters will be able to upgrade the app without buying a new one.

"Until now, players have had no concrete information about their game," Babolat said. "Type and number of strokes, spin level, ball impact location, total and effective play time, power, endurance, technique, consistency, energy, rallies — all of this is brand-new information that has never before been available to players. Babolat Play allows players to essentially take a picture of their game, and understand how and where they can make key improvements."

Testing revealed that players loved comparing measurements like power levels, Babolat said. The data allow comparisons among Babolat Play owners worldwide, and he said he expected that to be popular with younger players who gravitate toward using technology for social interaction.

Although Fo Tien was among the Babolat racket testers, he said he did not feel he was ushering in a revolution.

"It's more of a novelty for me," said Tien, 43, who works in finance and lives in Diamond Bar, Calif. He was shocked to find that his hardest shots registered in the 50s on the scale Babolat established. Rafael Nadal, by comparison, hits in the 90s.

"But most of the data is confirming what I already knew," he said, adding that he found the community aspects "hokey."

"I already know I hit my shots on the upper part of the hoop so the ball stays on the string bed a split second longer," he said.

Tien is a 4.0-to-4.5 player on the United States Tennis Association's self-rating scale from 1.5 to 7.0. He said that the new Babolat racket could be good for beginners and for teaching professionals, but that it would be more helpful for his game if the information was broken down shot by shot. "This is still the first generation," he said. "There's a lot of opportunity there."

Palmero, a 3.5 player, said the Babolat racket was improving his game. The numbers provide reminders of his flaws and motivation to break his bad habits.

"I'm not as fast as I used to be, so when I run around my backhand, I'm hitting more defensive forehands," he said. "I'm also finding I hit more topspin on my backhand in practice, then I revert to slices during matches."

Goran Draskovic, 36, a software consultant in Orlando, Fla., said the racket was an effective coach and "a game changer."

Although he is a 4.5 player, Draskovic said he discovered that he hit more shots near the top of the racket and on the sides than he had thought.

"I had no clue I'm that bad," he said. "It's helping me because I'm reducing the percentage of off-center shots."

Lavie Sak, a teaching pro with an engineering background, said tennis was starved for such data, but he was moving in a different direction. This year, Sak and Sergey Feingold founded Shot Stats to design a device to provide instant feedback on racket head speed and a shot's rotations per minute. It will be small enough to attach to the strings like a vibration dampener, and they hope to make it available next summer.

"It will be more accurate than the Babolat Play because it is closer to the contact point, and you will get instant data," Sak said.

Such a device appealed to Tien because it could measure his play with different rackets or the effect of adjustments to his racket.

But Tien said much of what happened with the racket depended on the quality of a player's footwork, so he suggested one more gadget: "Someone should invent a sneaker with an electronic impulse center that gives you shocks to keep you on your toes and moving your feet."

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