How technology is transforming the business of Tennis

From modern??racquets??with ultra lightweight design to ball tracking technology that??captures every moment of ball's flight path, tennis is being transformed. We take a look at how the science and technology behind the game is changing the way the game is played and viewed.

Everything??has changed since tennis went professional in 1968.??From a technical perspective, tennis is a different sport now, transformed by data and power. From a viewing perspective, the sport has never been in better health, with spectator numbers booming and new players bursting through to challenge established crowd-pullers Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray. This fan interest was evident at London's O2 Arena two months ago as crowds of up to 17,000 packed the venue to watch the world's top eight do battle in the ATP World Tour Finals, and it will be no surprise if attendance records are broken when the Australian Open starts next week, exceeding the nearly 685,000 who poured through the gates of Melbourne Park a year ago.

This expanding global footprint is only slightly less impressive??than the sport's tremendous explosion of prize money and athlete endorsements over the past 40 years. The total purse of the 1968 U.S. Open, won on the men's side by Arthur Ashe, was $100,000.?? The prize money at this year's U.S. Open is expected to approach $50 million, while the prize money for the 2015 Australian Open has been hiked to a record A$40 million ($32.57 million).

Technology is playing its part to, arguably impacting on more areas of the game, then in any other sport. A pivotal moment in the evolution of technology in tennis happened just over a year ago when the International Tennis Federation agreed to embrace new connected racquet technology, approving its in-competition use in time for the start of the 2014 season. The decision opened up a myriad of possibilities for the use of integrated technology, which is expected to spread to other equipment such as clothing. Within five years, every piece of tennis equipment on court could be connected, and then the sport will be well and truly into a new era of so-called "player analysis technology."

Currently, a racquet by the French manufacturer Babolat remains the only product with the technology built in. It includes gyroscopes and accelerometers in the handle to collected data on a player's performance. Power, spin, and the area the ball came into contact with the racket are all recorded and synced to a smartphone. The data collected??will be made available in real time on this years WTA circuit. There are a lot of predictions about how tennis racket technology will progress in the future. Wireless sensors in the base of the racket that record the player's swing speed are being developed, along with hi-tech strings that bruise before breaking.?? In??the not too distant future in play performance data could come from the actual racquet strings.

And it's not only racquet design that is being adapted to incorporate smart technology, so-called smart courts are also being developed. PlaySight, an Israeli start-up, have developed SmartCourt, which uses five high-definition cameras to record every move a player makes. There are no sensors to wear, and all the analysis is instantly accessible through a kiosk on the court or through any wireless device. The technology is already being used by Novak Djokovic, the No. 1 male player in the world, who also invests in the company.

At the Australian Open this year, however, the only technology during the matches will be Hawkeye, the system that monitors the lines and revolutionised the game almost a decade ago, but is not without it's detractors. This is the other side of the technology in tennis argument, the criticism that automation has dehumanised the sport, toning down the entertainment value, which is obviously key to the business performance of the sport.

Former world No. 1 Andy Roddick blames technology for the decline in interaction between players and umpires. His solution?????He would scrap??Hawkeye or severely alter the system currently in place. "I feel like we've lost a lot of our personality, " he said. "If someone is really having a go at the umpire, you are not going to change the channel. It's an impossibility." And Roddick isn't alone in his dislike of Hawkeye. Roger Federer, the 17-time grand slam champion, asked Hawkeye to be switched off during the 2007 Wimbledon final against Rafael Nadal. And two years ago in Dubai, Federer told reporters: "What I like without Hawk-Eye is just the players challenging the umpires more often."????Think of John McEnroe's temperamental outbursts. Maybe Roddick and Federer have a point, although it has to be said that the overwhelming majority of players currently on the tennis tour have welcomed the instant replay system, as have the global media who rely on the statistical output from the various pieces of technology, including IBM's SlamTracker, which draws on over 41 million data points to predict how the match will go and identify patterns in players and their styles, and SecondSight, which tracks direction, speed and distance of the actual players as they move about the court.

But while on court technology is transforming the way the game of tennis is being played and viewed, it is the big-data approach exemplified by Babolat and Playsite that could have broader implications for the world of sports. There are no limitations to what you can do once you have digital capability. Big data - information and video - holds the promise of continuous improvement, and the chance for players and coaches to know how and why they succeed or fail. This is arguably the greatest contribution tennis technology is making; helping to improve the actual game.

And for the actual fans, technology is also delivering wonderful benefits. Fans at the Australian Open last year were able to trial an exciting piece of technology. Visitors stepped into a virtual reality tennis court using the power of the Oculus Rift headset. They were handed a specifically designed motion-sensitive tennis racket and were challenged to return a virtual serve from the best tennis players on earth.

And if that is not enough, technology is now able to solve tennis's oldest and most frustrating problem ??? rain.????The Australian Open will add a third retractable roof for the 2015 tennis tournament that could ensure all matches are played "even with a fortnight of solid rain." Now that really is something to write home about.

This year's Australian Open is scheduled from Jan. 19 to Feb. 1 at Melbourne Park.