While watching World No. 1 Novak Djokovic today in the French Open against Gilles Muller, one might notice a bit more than mere natural talent in Djokovic. The reigning Wimbledon champion is an avid investor in tennis technology, in particular a company called PlaySight.
Yesterday, the company announced two expansions to their SmartCourt system–SmartCourt Live and an app to monitor SmartCourt activity.
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PlaySight is a company focused on finding analytical solutions to problems on the tennis court. Three former members of the Israeli Armed Forces, Chen Shachar, Yoram Bentzur and Evgeni Khazanov, founded the company with the intention of bringing 3D visualization techniques used for fighter pilot training to the tennis court.
Their SmartCourts are essentially four high-definition cameras set up on a tennis court that provide real time tactical management. The system tracks such intricacies as the height of the ball over the net, serve speed, form and the depth of balls on the court. It also has a workout function, which tracks the amount of calories burned in a SmartCourt session and the distance a player has covered.
According to World Tennis Magazine, the SmartCourt Live system provides “unlimited smart live streaming and recording of practice and match video on any tennis court.” The live stream has no limit on the amount of viewers who can stream the session, and even possesses a three hour DVR capability, with which the viewer can return to previous events within the SmartCourt Live session. It even has an embedded scoreboard, using PlaySight’s technology in order to track the real-time score of a live session.
PlaySight is pairing this new feature with the release of their new PlaySight Tennis app, which offers review videos and feedback on a mobile platform. The app also contains a social element, allowing the player to send live stream video and recorded video with others on multiple social media platfoms, email, and SMS. The app is free in the app store, but requires a SmartCourt.