What do you think about the new high tech racquets?

The latest news is that Babolat has developed new high tech ("smart"/"connected") tennis racquets that provide information about everything "such as shot power and ball impact location along with the number of strokes, the level of spin imparted, total play time, endurance, technique, consistency, energy and rallies."

https://eurosport.yahoo.com/news/te...h-racquets-time-wimbledon-113520624--ten.html

What do you think this new technology's impact will be on tennis? Do you think great tennis players will become better because of it, or worse? Do you think poor tennis players will be enabled to register great improvements thanks to it?

I guess that this will change tennis. And I suspect that thanks to it tennis will become something less natural and something more like an electronic game. And I don't think that will be something unqualifiedly good. I think it will have disadvantages. Tennis will lose its final links with being a recreational sport and will become competitive to the utmost. The tennis racquet will be transformed into a literal weapon.

I even suspect that Nadal's recent relative failures on clay (surprising quarterfinal losses in Monte Carlo and Barcelona, and still not at his best in Madrid) might have been due to the impact of this new technology (he being a user of Babolat racquets; a significant quotation of Eric Babolat in the above article: "For me it was incredible, that you can take the number one tennis player in the world (Rafa Nadal) and see that he doesn't really know anything about what is happening in his racquet, apart from his feel. He has no data about anything, and it is incredible to imagine."). I think it is not something great for a great player with a natural feel of his strokes like Nadal to be concerned with the feedback from his racquet. And I suspect that if indeed he has been testing that new technology, the revelations about his strokes that it has revealed might have already impacted him at least mentally. And in support of my suspicion is Nadal's talk about a mental block he experienced in the Madrid Masters final (http://rafaelnadalfans.com/2014/05/12/interview-with-rafael-nadal-madrid-open-2014/#more-22284).

What do you think? Will this technology eventually be for the better as far as tennis is concerned? Or might it rather reduce tennis into a kind of war, and spell the end of the good old days when tennis used to be entertaining and fun?
 

heninfan99

Talk Tennis Guru
I think I would be bored of it after a day or two. I'm also not interested the super spin string pattern racquets.
 

TeamOB

Professional
I messed around with my buddy's Babolat Play a bit recently. It was really cool, but not really all that useful. I told me stuff I mostly already knew. For example: I slice my BH a lot. I hit lots of topspin on my FH. I am a bit better at hitting the sweetspot on my FH then my BH. I hit my BH a little jammed sometimes. etc. All this stuff is cool, but you don't really need a $300 racquet to notice it. You can just feel it yourself.
 

Russeljones

Talk Tennis Guru
I messed around with my buddy's Babolat Play a bit recently. It was really cool, but not really all that useful. I told me stuff I mostly already knew. For example: I slice my BH a lot. I hit lots of topspin on my FH. I am a bit better at hitting the sweetspot on my FH then my BH. I hit my BH a little jammed sometimes. etc. All this stuff is cool, but you don't really need a $300 racquet to notice it. You can just feel it yourself.

This. It's a gimmick to make them money.
 

TheMusicLover

G.O.A.T.
It's called 'marketing'.

There are enough bums willing to buy 'Special Raquet Designed for Top Player X' out there, somehow in the false belief it would make play like Top Player X.
To the $$$$$$$$$$$-delight of appareil manufacturers all over the world.
 
I'm all for more technology to better the game, but this isn't it as others have said already. The info is too limited. Now if this racquet could spit back data for what shots I tend to hit down break point, etc., then it'd be infinitely more useful.
 

sureshs

Bionic Poster
It is not latest news, it is old news. I already played a session with the Play racket to help my pro shop guy experiment with installing the app and familiarize himself with the format of the data. You need to remember to turn it on, and to specify to the app if you a leftie or a rightie. It tries to bring in scores from other people on the Internet, giving you a maximum number for a stroke, and where you stand relative to that in terms of power. It knows which shots are backhands, forehands, and serves.
 
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