Nothing particularly unique about the software part. But the quoted text is interesting: that is kind of true about pro vs amateur tennis (or table tennis or badminton). Didn't quite notice it. Still, amateur tennis is funner when you play to win the point :D
Nice. But score keeping in one's head, while challenging, is at least doable. Truly impossible: keeping track of serve/receive pairs and partner switches during casual doubles play. I've never seen four trained engineers get it right. :-)
Anyone who has played some tennis can attest that it's more mental than physical specially when you're playing against opponents of the same level. No magic about that.
Didn't look at the article, but I was disappointed that Wimbledon doesn't have automated line calls. Most atp/wta tournaments above a certain level have no line judges these days.
As a tennis player, I think this is super impressive.
Their models actually do a decent job of replicating true tennis strategy, and as they pointed out, even account for the quirks like the left handedness of Nadal.
However, it's still a bit unrealistic due to the lack of full data.
There's 3 things that make a tennis shot what it is: placement (covered in the video), pace (speed of ball), and spin (rpm and direction of spin). In this method, they only use placement. Probably because pace and spin data don't exist at this scale.
But there's a big difference between a slice, flat, and top spin shot to the same placement on the court, and it directly affects the return shot. For example, it's a very common and 'safe' play to return a slice with a slice
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