Babolat Play’s Connected Tennis Racket Is the Future of Tennis
The Babolat Play connected tennis racket. (Image via holabirdsports)
Babolat was founded in 1875 with a mission: produce the highest quality racket sport equipment, innovate, and design the latest racket technology, and provide a material edge for their customers. Now, the company that invented the first racket strings in the 19th century is offering the chance to play tennis, connected.
Babolat Play power button.
First introduced at the French Open in 2012, Babolat Play is tennis racket technology that collects a wealth of data about your personal tendencies and style as you compete on the court. Babolat Play rackets are the only rackets on the market that you actually turn on before you play. By flipping the switch on the bottom of the racket, you initiate the process of playing connected, meaning the racket will then monitor everything from shot power to endurance to stroke technique.
As described in our previous review of Babolat Play, these connected rackets rely on the combination of an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a microprocessor installed in the handle to thoroughly record every aspect of your game before transferring the data via Bluetooth to a mobile device or via USB to a computer. After any point, game, set, or match, the Babolat Play interface will display easy to understand statistics that will help you master your game.
Until January 1, 2014, using data-collecting rackets mid-match was ruled illegal in each of the four grand slams, but a recent new amendment to the rulebook permits this new tech to be utilized in the biggest matches. Still, in the same vein as the worldwide tennis law that bans coaching during a match, the data collected by Babolat Play can only be viewed following the completion of the match.
Although Rafael Nadal, Agnieszka Radwanska, and several other Babolat Play users have been eliminated from the ongoing 2015 Australian Open, Babolat Play will soon fall under the microscope again as summer approaches and brings on the world’s greatest tennis tournaments.
Pulse
The Pulse is your personal measuring tool, a dynamic interface that charts the power, technique, and endurance of your game. Displayed in triangular fashion on the Babolat Play app, your Pulse indexes these three categories as percentages and fluctuates depending on how you play.
“The power is a percentage, it is not an actual value. The maximum of 100 percent power is equal to a serve of 200 KM/Hour (124.4 MPH),” Jean-Marc Zimmerman, Babolat’s Chief Information Officer, tells SportTechie.
“You will have more or less power depending on your racket head speed.”
While a raw racket head speed statistic would provide players with a more concrete value, the average person may find it difficult to quantify such an unfamiliar value. Babolat Play transfers racket head speed recorded by the accelerometer into a service speed percentage that, with a cap of 124.4 MPH, can be compared to the likes of pro tennis players on tour.
The endurance index is based on a combination of the number of shots you take per minute, and the power you exude per shot. To reach your peak endurance, hitting a high volume of shots, while also maintaining your power, is essential.
The technique index employs the racket’s impact locator. Each ball impact is registered, and after your match or training session, Babolat Play will reveal your personal sweet spot for forehands, backhands, serves, and smashes. This percentage is a measure of your proficiency in striking the ball at your sweet spot on the frame.
The app also displays how often you hit each stroke flat, with topspin, or with slice, allowing you to further analyze your game and marking your strengths and weaknesses on the court. Here, the gyroscope within the handle works in combination with the impact locator. The gyroscope determines the nature of each shot by the orientation of your racket when you strike the ball, and the impact locator is then able reveal whether you are efficiently hitting your topspin serves, flat smashes, or those difficult backhand slices.
Each time you check the Pulse, it will display your latest session in a vibrant orange and your previous session in a faded outline. You can also go back and check each session individually. Over time, the Pulse will be able to exhibit your own longstanding strengths and weaknesses.
Babolat Play app also allows you to share your stats with the rest of the Babolat Play community, giving you the opportunity to see how you stack up against your friends and rivals.
New Tech, Same Feel
For professional tennis players, the racket is the means of their livelihood, an extension of their dominant arm. Like Major League Baseball aces with their throwing mechanics or NFL quarterbacks with ball inflation, the best tennis players meticulously craft their dream racket with the most precise specificities.
“We have pro players using the racket in professional matches, and for those players, they feel every gram,” explains Zimmerman.
“If you have one extra gram somewhere on the racket, they will feel it.”
Typically, racket handles are hollow. There is little to remove to offset the addition of a gyroscope and accelerometer within the handle. For rackets like the AeroPro Lite, Babolat was forced to completely redesign the handle to ensure tour players a seamless transition between their standard model and a Babolat Play racket.
Designing a connected racket while also providing the exact same feel proved to be one of the Babolat team’s biggest challenges in the development phase, but upon completion, Babolat Play rackets maintain the same weight and feel as their forebearers.
InvenSense and Babolat Play
Babolat’s primary partner in this technological endeavor was San Jose-based, InvenSense, a world leader in motion-tracking sensors. Even if you are not personally familiar with their brand, there is a significant chance they play a role in your daily life. InvenSense provides the motion controllers (i.e. gyroscopes, accelerometers, compasses, etc.) inside Samsung Galaxy models, iPhone 6s, the Nintendo Wii Remote, various tablets, smart TV remotes, and now Babolat Play rackets.
“They have had a pure technical electronic design role. We really partnered in developing the algorithms. Us (Babolat), with the experience in Tennis and having models of all the movements you can make on the court, and their experience in analyzing the signals coming out of the sensors and making sure that they translate into the right movements.”
Two respected heavyweights in their own respective fields, Babolat and InvenSense crafted an innovative product that is the first of its kind. Although still rooted in age-old tradition and etiquette, tennis has taken another step into the digital age. We look forward to seeing where the French tennis giant takes Babolat Play next as it grows on the ATP Tour and in the amateur realm.
