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Tennis training in India may soon get more accessible, thanks to a pair of young players who are using artificial intelligence to fill the coaching gap that persists beyond big cities.<\/p>\n
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Aadish Shelke from Aurangabad and Bhagyashri Meena from Mumbai \u2014 both 21-year-old tennis players and Computer Science students at IIIT Pune \u2014 have developed NextPlayAI, a platform that analyses tennis videos using machine learning to offer personalised feedback on strokes, footwork and match movements. The aim: to help budding tennis players from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities access guidance that usually requires expensive academies and elite coaches.<\/p>\n
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The duo\u2019s innovation earned them a Samsung Solve for Tomorrow grant under the category Social Change through Sport and Technology. The platform is part of Samsung\u2019s flagship education programme that supports youth-led tech solutions for real-world challenges. This year, four winning teams received \u20b91 crore incubation support at IIT Delhi to scale their ideas.<\/p>\n
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Shelke said the idea emerged from the reality that tennis remains concentrated in a few urban pockets. \u201cTennis coaching often feels like a luxury,\u201d he said. \u201cIn a city like Aurangabad, high-quality infrastructure and expert coaching are extremely limited. Many promising players drop out because they can\u2019t get the right support at the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n
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NextPlayAI helps players record their practice sessions and compare them with professional benchmarks \u2014 from serve mechanics to racket angles and on-court movement. Meena said the goal is to make tennis learning affordable and accessible. \u201cThere is so much valuable footage and data on elite players. We wanted to bring that intelligence to young athletes everywhere, especially those outside big metros,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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Through the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow mentorship, the team refined their approach using design thinking to ensure the tool adapts to different learning styles. \u201cEvery tennis player has a unique rhythm and technique,\u201d Shelke said. \u201cThe AI has to recognise individuality, not force uniformity.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The duo now plans to collaborate with district sports associations and tennis academies to pilot the platform across smaller towns. They also want to build a team of developers and players from similar backgrounds \u2014 those who know firsthand the challenges of pursuing tennis from outside the mainstream circuit.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe want to see more tennis champions emerge from places people don\u2019t expect,\u201d Meena said. \u201cTalent exists everywhere \u2014 opportunity must too.\u201d<\/p>\n
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As India looks beyond cricket to build a broader sporting culture, innovations like these aim to ensure that future tennis stars aren\u2019t limited by their pin code.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Tennis training in India may soon get more accessible, thanks to a pair of young players who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-311927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}