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WTA, SAP Unveil Data Analytics Initiative

Aug 7th 2015
Lindsay Davenport

STANFORD, CALIF. — Where better to showcase newfangled technology than in Silicon Valley, the global hub of innovation and home to market makers like Apple, Oracle, Google, and Facebook?

On Wednesday morning under sunny Stanford skies, the WTA and partner SAP unveiled a software package that will allow players, coaches, and, perhaps more importantly, fans, to utilize real-time data analytics and experience the sport in a whole new way. Former No. 1 and current coach/TV analyst Lindsay Davenport called the platform, for the moment available exclusively on tour-authorized tablets, “the next frontier,” and WTA CEO Stacey Allaster deemed it a “game-changer.”

We can’t stand still,” said Allaster, signaling perhaps the WTA’s biggest innovation since the tour welcomed on-court coaching in 2008. “We have to be progressive. We have to embrace change, particularly technology.”

Just as moneyball/sabermetrics have forever altered Major League Baseball’s landscape, Allaster is hoping that this new approach to statistical analysis will transform women’s professional tennis, providing groundbreaking insight to players and coaches as they push to optimize scouting and strategy. Broadcasters have long had access to in-match statistics — first serve percentage, returns points won, break points saved, etc. — but these numbers and more, including color-coded diagrams that track everything from serve direction/placement to contact points on returns, will now be in the hands of coaches sitting courtside, live analysis that can be customized and passed directly on to players during on-court visits.

Some 3,300  WTA matches will go up into the cloud each year, a seemingly invaluable archive that players and coaches will be able to access at their leisure.  Serving as a spokesperson for the WTA and SAP, a German company, Breman-born Angelique Kerber said she plans to make use of the technology in the coming months. “It’s a very big step for the future,” she said. “I think I will use it for sure because it helps my game.”

The big thing about being a coach is to not only give your player the best chance to succeed with their own game, but also giving them tips on the opponent — what their weaknesses are, what their strategies most likely will be and how you combine the two to be successful,” said Davenport, who co-coaches American Madison Keys with her husband, Jonathan Leach.

Davenport was spotted courtside with the tablet during Keys’ first-round win over Serbian Alesandra Krunic at the Bank of the West Classic. It was in her hands again on Wednesday night, as she watched Keys surrender her momentum in a deflating three-set 1-6, 6-4, 6-1 loss to Croat Ajla Tomljanovic. Davenport’s tablet will reveal much about the match. As they say, the numbers never lie. Her 20-year-old protégé struggled with her first serve (53%), managed to convert just three of seven break-point opportunities, and finished with a pair of double faults. What the data analytics won’t tell us is how bad Keys’ body language was throughout much of the match, and how a pair of animated on-court coaching visits from Leach couldn’t stem the tide.

Traditionalists who have opposed on-court coaching from the start will likely bristle at the new technology, preferring instead the solitary, mano a mano nature of the sport that has long been among of its signature qualities. And, indeed, one must wonder if, with all that information at our fingertips, we’ve crossed into an on-demand era in which the sport’s human element is only further diminished. 

It’s tricky,” said the No. 59-ranked American Alison Riske, who said she has yet to experiment with the new technology. “Tennis is one of the few sports where you’re at it by yourself. I think for fan purposes, they’re trying to incorporate different things here and there. You can’t fight that because if it helps grow tennis and brings more spectators to the sport, at the end of the day that’s what keeps us going.”     

The WTA and SAP have experimented in this area before. In October 2014, they rolled out a mobile app for the WTA Finals Singapore that gave fans access to content, news feeds, polls, stats, profiles and photos. How exactly fans will access this latest technology push remains to be seen, but it will be visible at seven events in 2015 during on-court coaching consultations: the Bank of the West Classic, Rogers Cup, Connecticut Open, Wuhan Open, Prudential Hong Kong Tennis Open, WTA Finals Singapore and WTA Elite Trophy in Zhuhai, China.