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Wimbledon, Tennis & Technologies

The amazing tech stories behind the game and statistics at the world’s favourite tennis tournament. Wimbledon is one of the most important London events, watched by million around the world. It is certainly about entertainment and sport aces, but behind the events there are is huge investment in technology that is becoming more relevant to host and broadcast such a massive event. Here we show you some of the technologies tools used on Wimbledon.

IBM SlamTracker

This uber data cruncher analyses and visualises player data for each point played. In 2011, its makers, IBM, added a feature called ‘Keys to the Match’. This trawls more than seven years’ worth of player data – some 39 million data points – to find patterns in the match technique of winning players. ‘Keys to the Match’ can then use this insight to pit players against one another ahead of a match and reveal which three crucial elements of the game each player must excel in to be more likely beat the other (service speed, backhand, volleys and so on).

As well as all that, SlamTracker is the technology that keep us up to date with each point’s statistics in real time and visualises all point data, such as number of shots played per rally, which direction a shot has been played in, etc.

SecondSight

It measures players’ stamina and tactics throughout the match, tracking their movement digitally to work out exactly how fast they move and how far they run throughout each game, measuring how their performance changes throughout the match.

It is an invaluable addition to players’ and coaches’ analytical arsenal – not to mention providing a juicy extra dimension of player stats for fans to chew on in the Dog and Fox. This tool can help players to improve their performance.

Hawk-Eye

It’s the technology that shows you precisely where the ball bounced, indicating whether it was in or out. At Wimbledon, players can challenge a judge twice per set (and once again for tiebreak) over a line call, and Hawk-Eye is used to double-check the call.

Hawk-Eye was developed in 1999 by Hawk-Eye Innovations and has also been used in snooker broadcast coverage. It uses several cameras to follow the ball then triangulates to work out the ball’s location.

Wimbledon.com and the cloud

Wimbledon.com got a 450 million page views last year – and this year it could reach half a billion (it’s also had a very eye-catching make-over for 2012 that’s sure to excite fans). That’s a colossal amount of web traffic to field. Besides that Wimbledon.com has to fight off between 40,000 and 80,000 attacks from hackers, spyware, malware and bots every day.

As a sponsor, IBM hosts Wimbledon.com on its private cloud. This provides the organisation with a very secure, scalable and very robust way of hosting an enormous website.

Radar gun

It is a small Doppler radar unit used to measure the speed of balls and serves.

The Wimbledon app

Wimbledon fans can get all the action in the palm of their hands with the tennis tournament’s rather snazzy app. This year for the first time ever it’ll feature live video streaming from key matches (limited to five minutes per match). It also gives you live commentary, all the scores in real time, photos, Radio Wimbledon, the schedule, and on-demand video of play. It’s available on iPhone and Android.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Petra Snow .