Tag: Tennis

Getting my 100% verified UTR rating after 6 verified matches

This summer, I decided to try something new for my tennis journey by actively participating in UTR (Universal Tennis Registry) . This was also inspired by UTR’s increased popularity in Shanghai , where I was visiting last year.  I am seeing it thru my own eyes that it was no longer just a rating used in North America (mostly in US).

In this post, I’d like share my experience this summer with UTR. In total I paid $80 for two leagues tournament.  I will be covering

  • How to UTR rating system works (vs NTRP and WTN)
  • Its “power users’ price & value from a non-US resident perspective
  • Overall experience for me after completing first 6 ranked matches

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Lost in 3 set from my First UTR Match – start my 2024 season

UTR (Universal Tennis Rating) is a globally recognized rating system for tennis players.  After being an outsider looking for a few years, I finally played my first UTR tournament (Flex League) in Toronto.  Overall the experience was positive, despite losing a close match in 3 sets.  In this post, I’d like to share my overall experience and my match breakdown.

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2023’s ladder season starts with a L

SwingVision post game stats

It is a bit tough pill to swallow with a lob sided L for the 1st ladder game this season. At the same time it wasn’t a surprise either.

On my own side – I wasn’t in my good form with 5kg overweight. Today also marked my 1st time playing at the Milton club.

My opponent is today is a solid 5.0 player with an aggressive attacking style. He doesn’t seem to have weakness on forehand, backhand or serve.

It is a discouraging but hopefully it is providing extra motivation to get back to my peak form. I don’t have many years left to improve my skills. Losing games like this against players significant older than me was not what I wanted to play.

First outdoor game in 2022 season – my tennis journal #1

Finally, I am able to play my first outdoor game, recorded using my newest equipment fence cap (bought on Black Friday 2021). It is a pro-set game with Kevin – my doubles partner from Credit Valley Club Inter-county “B” team. We didn’t play very often recently, as he spent more time on doubles and I focused on singles match plays.

The game was played at Glen Abby community part upon my request. The weather is cloudy with mild wind conditions, 8 degrees celsius in early after. I believe this to be an ideal weather condition for tennis, but Kevin feels it is a bit too cold. He said the balls feel too hard with the cold temperate. My topspin heavy style neutralized the bad weather condition, as I usually don’t need to hit the ball perfectly to generate points.

For the actual scores, I won the 1st set 8:3 by winning the last 4 games straight. The 2nd set was much closer and ended with 1-1 when the times ran out (the total score for the 2nd set was 15-15).

My conditioning is still nowhere close to my peak level. If we have enough time to finish, the 2nd set would be a lot closer. Fatigue seems to impact me much more than Kevin.

What I like about my game today is I was able to hit 2 winners on the forehand cross-court, each with over 85km/h on the line. I don’t usually attack that angle on my previous matches

What is interesting is my backhand slice shots type % – only 28% slices. I used to only use slices on my backhand so this is definitely encouraging to see. It could also indicate Kevin didn’t attack my backhand with deep balls much.

2021 Tennis Journey Recap

2021 is a challenging year for me.  I am quite satisfied with the progress I have made with my tennis journey.  I believe I became a better tennis player overall with the technology I have been using.

If you have arrived here, I hope you are a tennis fan (not just a speculator) like me, who is curious to learn to adopt modern technology to improve and enjoy the game. Here are the three things I am aiming to help you achieve :

  • Get a better understanding of how to get the most value out of SwingVision
  • Learn some new tricks and avoid the pitfall I experienced
  • Be inspired to improve your own tennis

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Analyze my tennis post-game videos from a Mac

This holiday I got another tech toy – an M1 powered MacBook Pro 13”.   One of the reasons to justify my buying decision is I will be able to “produce” more tennis tracking videos using the Mac version of the SwingVision. In this post, I’d like to share my initial review of it, after using it for a couple of sessions.

In a normal situation, I would wait for a few more weeks to get a bit more hands-on experience. Unfortunately, the city I live in imposed a new lock-down measure, essentially blocking any indoor tennis over the winter. The plan is to keep updating this with more information available.

Key takeaways & recommendations

  • SwingVision on Mac is a working version that can analyze video captured from any recording device with a minimum of 720p and 30fps.
  • The convenience of viewing and editing the video on a bigger screen with a Mac provides a better user experience.
  • The post-game editing feature is still limited since SwingVision doesn’t allow for exporting video in the Mac for now. However, it doesn’t limit any video edit by tools like iMovie to pre-process the imported video
  • If you are an apple watch user to tag the game with real-time scoring, I don’t suggest you wait a bit. The current combination will result in losing the real-time scoring capabilities since the video and the watch stats isn’t talking to each other.

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How to make a post game tennis video with my Apple Watch and iPhone

This is my #2 post on tennis video analyzing, #6 post on using Apple Watch to track tennis performance, and #11 post on sports in general.

The coronavirus pandemic isn’t over yet, but at least recreation tennis is back. The city I live in have allowed for tennis activity since late May, and I have been play a lot of tennis since then.

I also joined a new tennis club, and actively participated in the ladder game. After playing over 10 games using the newly improved SwingVision app (most recent version 7.2), I have found an effective way of generating a 10-15min highlight video of ALL POINTS played in a 1hr ladder match.

The video highlight generated is overlayed with the match score, recorded real time by Apple Watch. This makes it enjoyable to watch for friends and families, because it feel like watching a Pro match highlight between Federer and Nadal.

The finished video is invaluable. It can be used for:

  • Analyze point by point game performance to look for area of improvements
  • Share with your partner and other audiences
  • Store and archive in your personal library for later usage

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Tennis video analysis – a Primer

Tennis video analysis – a Primer

I received a special gift from my lovely wife during last year’s Christmas.

It is an add-on lens to put on my iPhone to capture more area. It is particularly useful when recording the tennis match from the baseline, because my iPhone doesn’t have a wide angle lens built-in so it doesn’t capture enough area.

To be honest, originally I was just planning to try out the new AI feature offered by SwingVision app. After using it for over 6 weeks and multiple rounds of trial and errors, post game video has become an essential piece of my tennis life. The app itself is still in its infancy stage with all kinds of limitations, however I can see a lot of potential in this area.

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Tennis score tracking and exported data analysis with Apple Watch using Swing App

Tennis score tracking and exported data analysis with Apple Watch using Swing App

During the winter of 2018-2019, I was able to take my tennis tracking journey into a new level.  By now most of my tennis hitting partners are calling me a “data nerd”, clicking my watch like crazy during the game. But when I show them the stats after the game, they all (seem to be) impressed.

I did the following two new things in particular:

  1. Used the “Point by Point + ” score tracking in the Swing App to track all the points I have played. In total, I tracked 18 matches over the last 4 month, all of them were single matches and played in 1 hour.
  2. Exported the captured data into spreadsheets. By analyzing the data set, I was able to identify some of the limitations, as well as some opportunities to further enhance the analytics experience.

Before we dive in, if you are interested in knowing the tennis tracking tools and methodology, or a high-level overview, you can check my 1st blog post of this series: Tennis tracking after 18 month of usage. Or if you prefer to track drills instead of match, you can check out my last post on advanced tennis shots tracking.

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