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<\/p>\nMore people are playing tennis in America than ever before.<\/p>\n
A record 27.3million people picked up a racket at least once last year, up by 1.6m from 2024, representing a growth of 54 per cent since 2019, according to a news release issued by the United States Tennis Association (USTA) last week. That\u2019s nearly 10m more players over what has been six consecutive years of growth. \u201cCore players\u201d, defined as individuals who played 10 or more times throughout the year, increased by 1.5m to 14.5m in 2025.<\/p>\n
And with more players, comes more data. Companies are queuing up to be the Strava of tennis \u2014 offering amateur players the chance to share data and footage of themselves and have the kind of social element that Strava has facilitated, principally for runners and cyclists, since its founding in 2009.<\/p>\n
Strava does have a tennis offering, where players can track their cardio performance and record results, but it doesn\u2019t offer the kind of in-depth stroke and performance analysis offered by other racket-sport-specific apps. There are plans to bolster the tennis offering with match tracking to supplement the existing GPS data, a representative told The Athletic via email \u2014 adding that tennis data is the most uploaded of their six racket sports available.<\/p>\n
It can feel like every month a new player is entering the market, promising to help tennis players reach their full potential. In November, the eight-time Grand Slam champion Andre Agassi announced a multi-year partnership with IBM for a new digital platform for tennis, pickleball and padel that, according to a company spokesperson, \u201cuses AI to analyze everyday video footage and deliver professional-grade coaching directly to players\u2019 phones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other big players in the market include Zenniz, which offers \u201creal-time performance tracking, electronic line calling, and immersive video.\u201d Baseline Vision, based in Israel, claims to do something similar. PlaySight, which provides \u201call-in-one multi-angle video platform for broadcast, replay (VAR), coaching, and automated highlights\u201d, was an early mover in the space.<\/p>\n
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\n Andre Agassi has backed IBM\u2019s digital racket-sport platform. (Graham Denholm \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The market leader, though, is generally considered to be SwingVision, which has around 500,000 users (of those this year, 90 per cent have used the tennis offering, the remainder is almost all for pickleball, with a small amount doing so for padel, which only just launched and hasn\u2019t yet been actively promoted). It has around 25,000 paying subscribers, with rates starting at $180 a year, giving users 30 hours of film footage per month, and unlimited AI video trimming, match highlights, shot stats, heatmaps, and line calling.<\/p>\n
It was founded by AI experts from Apple and Tesla and its app launched in 2019, with the aim of bringing \u201cthe Wimbledon Centre Court experience to all athletes, using just your phone\u201d, as CEO and co-founder Swupnil Sahai put it on LinkedIn. Its investors include 2003 U.S. Open champion Andy Roddick, former world No. 4 James Blake and Tennis Australia. The U.S. accounts for around 45 per cent of its monthly active users, with China and the United Kingdom (both eight per cent) the next biggest.<\/p>\n
The tech-savvy amateur tennis market is considerable, with 193,000 regular weekly visitors to the r\/10s Reddit page, which describes itself as \u201ca Bunch of Tips for Beginners and Intermediates.\u201d SwingVision has its own Reddit page, where users share footage of themselves using the app (complete with score bugs as if watching a professional match, and the speed of each shot shown on screen).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe market is sizable,\u201d says head of business development Nikhil Jayashankar. \u201cThis is a multi-billion dollar opportunity, in just tennis and pickleball alone. If we\u2019re able to capture even 10 to 20 per cent of that market, we\u2019ll put ourselves in a really good position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jayashankar, who previously worked for the technology consultancy giant Accenture but has been with the company since soon after it was founded seven years ago, says that during their last round of investment in 2023, SwingVision raised funds at a $35million valuation. He thinks that would be north of $50m now. The target is to have a million users.<\/p>\n
Jayashankar, himself an NCAA Division I player for University of California, Berkeley, still plays with friends and likes to review his serving stats (serve analysis is a particularly popular function, as it\u2019s a static shot and can be worked on like a golf swing).<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a free SwingVision app with fewer recording hours, storage and more basic analysis, and users are encouraged to mount their device on the back of the court with a Swing Stick, costing around $50. They can then record matches, with video cutting out the dead time so a two-hour match can be instantly cut to around 20 minutes. Videos are tagged automatically, which in the paid tiers includes advanced data like all the forehand returns they missed into the net. Other features include heat maps of shot placement broken out by stroke type and hitting position, and where you are missing the ball most frequently.<\/p>\n
A new feature called AI Swing Coach essentially tracks a player\u2019s best and worst patterns of play. If, as Jayashankar says, Strava can help deliver a training programme for the New York marathon, the aim of SwingVision is to enable a user to \u201cbeat (a certain) player in the next few months\u201d.<\/p>\n
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\n SwingVision offers detailed data on amateur players\u2019 performance. (Swing.Vision)<\/p>\n
The social element of Strava \u2014 sharing data and interacting with friends \u2014 has been key to its success, and that\u2019s what tennis wants to tap into. \u201cWe have different leaderboards of how you stack up versus your friends or peers or the overall SwingVision community \u2014 who hit the most shots in a given month, who hit the fastest serve,\u201d Jayashankar says. \u201cSo there\u2019s a little bit of that community dynamic as well that is prevalent in Strava.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says this will also underpin the company\u2019s pickleball offering, which was launched at the end of 2023, and its move into padel.<\/p>\n
\u201cOften it\u2019s just seeing the highlights and sharing them with friends,\u201d Jayashankar adds. \u201cI use it to stay connected. I have a group chat of former college tennis friends and we\u2019re all a little bit washed up, but it\u2019s nice to be able to share a good point with them or on my Instagram. Making myself feel like I still got it a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
An extension of this is the content creators who use apps like SwingVision to bring the technology to a wider community. Mark Sansait, a former Division III college tennis player for the University of Wisconsin, is now in his mid-thirties and a senior software engineer at the American College of Surgeons. In his spare time, he runs a YouTube page which has almost 25,000 subscribers, and features videos like reviews of tennis academies, strings and equipment. Sansait is now sponsored by SwingVision and regularly uploads videos of himself in action, providing the kind of social element that the company wants to push.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there\u2019s a really cool shot during the match, like a blazing down-the-line winner, I can highlight it and export it as vertical, which is the format that TikTok and YouTube shorts and Instagram Reels use, so it\u2019s super easy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s there, rather than on apps like SwingVision themselves, where footage can go viral and really reach the considerable amateur tennis community. Winston Du, one of the most popular YouTubers in this area, has 125,000 subscribers.<\/p>\n
Jayashankar believes an important element to the technology\u2019s growth is the extent to which coaches embrace this kind of technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been behind the eight ball compared to team sports and even individual sports like golf with things like Trackman,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen that mindset shift in the amateur tennis space. We\u2019ve worked over time to convince people that this should be part of your player development regimen, being able to use video and track how you\u2019re performing. Part of that is driven through the players but you\u2019re seeing a lot of fresh blood amongst coaches that are adopting these types of new technology solutions as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s coaches who are helping to promote SportAI, another player in this space. The Norwegian company was founded in late 2023 by tech and software industry experts, including CEO Lauren Pedersen, a former NCAA Division 1 player for American University, Washington, D.C. Although it is more of a business-to-business operation, primarily to training facilities, teams, broadcasters, retailers and equipment brands, it\u2019s used by \u00d8ivind S\u00f8rvald, the long-time coach of world No. 13 and three-time Grand Slam finalist Casper Ruud.<\/p>\n
Last summer, The Athletic was invited to try the technology at the grass courts at London\u2019s Roehampton Club, where the Wimbledon qualifiers take place. Over the course of an hour\u2019s hit, the company\u2019s computer vision and machine learning technology analysed elements of my (middling amateur) game, from power generation to swing velocity, comparing them to professional benchmarks.<\/p>\n
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\n Charlie Eccleshare\u2019s technique is put under the microscope. (SportAI)<\/p>\n
I was then shown videos of analysis of my forehand, backhand and serve, with graphics showing my biomechanics, swing, power and contact point. There are encouraging messages like \u201cgreat power!\u201d and \u201cideal sequence achieved,\u201d even if the comparisons to the pros are sometimes sobering. The technology can also make recommendations on what racket to use based on swing, something that runners will be familiar with when picking what shoe to buy.<\/p>\n
There are tips, too, like: \u201cEnsure your hips initiate the movement to create more effective power transfer. Delay the shoulder rotation slightly to allow for a more explosive racket acceleration.\u201d When it comes to the forehand, I\u2019m told to \u201cfocus on a compact backswing. Ensure that you swing down and hit the ball with your wrist low, before moving upward for topspin. This will enhance your curve and consistency.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to help people so they know what it is they need to work on, to tell you it\u2019s not everything that\u2019s wrong,\u201d says S\u00f8rvald, before my hit. That\u2019s reassuring, I think, though he hasn\u2019t yet seen me play.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI saves time,\u201d S\u00f8rvald adds. \u201cI use this with Casper if I need to know something and to convince him. We use everything to get the information across in the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The key, S\u00f8rvald and Pedersen say, is to have one thing to really focus on after each hit, and an app like this can show players what that should be. For me, it\u2019s a kink in the serve and trying to have a longer take-back. Even leaving aside the specific instructions, just being able to watch oneself back is extremely valuable \u2014 and it\u2019s easy to see why doing so becomes so addictive.<\/p>\n
Whether that\u2019s necessarily a good thing is open to question. A recent article in The Spectator was titled \u201cI\u2019m a Strava addict,\u201d in which the author wrote: \u201cIf a man runs through a forest but doesn\u2019t post it on Strava, it didn\u2019t happen. I won\u2019t believe it, anyway: the athletic tracker app is my new addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many would empathise with that sentiment, and there is a sense among some cyclists and runners that the obsession with data tracking and sharing has taken away some of their love for the activity. In 2018, I interviewed an athlete who had run a marathon at an elite time of 2hr 25min but had then switched to taking on challenges that weren\u2019t about the time, but about the joy of running. Like running the Tour de France route and completing 44 marathons in 44 different countries in 44 consecutive days.<\/p>\n
Whether tennis amateurs will become overly data-obsessed or whether this is simply a healthy and effective use of modern technology will likely only become clearer over the next few years.<\/p>\n
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