Improve Your Tennis Game with PlaySight
PlaySight is a sports video-review and analytics system that allows you to watch, measure, learn, and share any detail about your tennis game instantly and accelerate your improvement.
Tennis Director Jon Schaff from Midtown Athletic Club in Bannockburn discusses the benefits of this incredible new tool for members.
PlaySight is a tennis player's dream tool.
PlaySight is video analysis system designed for tennis, which not only gives you instant video replay of your match or lesson, but also an amazing amount of statistics, including ball height over net, ball speed, calories burned, and RPMs on the ball. It's changing for the better the way in which our members approach their game.
I use PlaySight in every lesson I give and we also use it for all our teams' home matches. It is simple to use and our members love it because they are able to have instant video feedback and can correct the errors they saw in their mechanics.
Here's how a typical lesson with PlaySight works.
A student arrives for her weekly lesson. She discusses with me her singles match yesterday and how her shots were landing short and her opponent was able to control the point. I recognize that I need to work on creating depth and I am excited to have my assistant coach, PlaySight, on my court.
We log in to the PlaySight touch screen kiosk. Log in is simple via email address and password. On the main screen we select STROKES AND DRILLS, the FREESTYLE PLAY.
This mode just means there is no set target and no specific stroke to use. This is what we use for a warmup. After our physical warmup and short-court hitting, we head back to the baseline. During our baseline warmup, I see exactly what she noticed in her match. Her shots were mostly landing just inside the service line.
We head to the PlaySight kiosk, where 132 appears in big green numbers. This number represents the number of shots we have hit together so far. I select ANALYZE and up pops the stats screen showing both our stats: Total Hits, Total Hits in the Court, and Fastest Hit.
These stats are a great tool, but not what I am looking for to help my student with her lack of depth issue. I select the STROKE tab to see more specific details. I find what I am looking for. PlaySight has broken down all her strokes by height over the net. She had 34% of her shots traveling 0-1 foot over the net, 44% between 1-2 feet over the net, and 22% were 2 feet or higher.
As a coach for 30 years (has it been that long? I don't feel that old), I know to create depth one needs to aim at least 2 feet over the net. "What do you notice about these height stats?", I ask my student.
"I guess I hit the ball low and flat," she remarks, but I see the light bulb in her mind come on. "I never realized, or paid attention to my ball height. I just tried to hit it faster, " she said.
"I have the perfect drill for us," I say, knowing that with the help of PlaySight, we can fix her depth issue.
I select STROKES AND DRILLS again, and this time I select FOREHANDS CROSS COURT for her and FOREHAND CROSSCOURT for me. The next screen gives me three crosscourt target options. I choose the target between the service line and baseline.
On the next screen, I choose TEAMWORK. This setting will count both of our shots that land in that target as one running total. On the last screen, I select our goal of 30 shots needing to land in that zone.
We start to hit cross court forehands. Each time our shots land in the target area the kiosk tracks our score. Once we reach our goal, we look at the stats. She now has 75% shots over 2 feet above the net.
This is just one example of a success story using PlaySight.
It is an amazing tool that is helping our members and coaching staff improve tennis, and we couldn't be more pleased.
In addition to Bannockburn, PlaySight is available at our Rochester and Chicago clubs, with more clubs to add the tool in the future.
If you haven't tried it yet, don't wait!