By Dr Benjamin Kelly

It was one of the defining comebacks of 2025.

In the first round at Wimbledon Taylor Fritz trails two sets to love and is two points from defeat against record‑breaking server Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, whose 153mph serves had dominated early.

While serving at 5–1 in the fourth‑set tie‑break, Mpetshi Perricard blinks. The American claws back, steals the set, and goes on to win in five. The Frenchman’s collapse from a seemingly unassailable position is a vivid example of how even explosive servers falter when trying to protect a lead.

Across 650,000+ points from Grand Slam tournaments between 2016 and 2019, players facing high situational pressure – such as break points and match points – produce significantly more unforced errors and double faults than on routine points. Both eventual match winners and losers show the same pattern. Even the best players in the world are predictably worse when the stakes rise.

This is not random variance or bad luck. It is loss aversion in action. When a double fault risks handing over a break, servers tend to play more conservatively: they hit fewer aces and outright winners, but also commit fewer outright errors. Studies have shown that ace rates can drop by around 15–20% on break points compared with routine points, while double faults also decline. The same psychology drives safer second serves and more central returns under pressure. Players trade risk for safety at precisely the moment when controlled aggression would close the point most efficiently.

Elite tennis reveals decision making under uncertainty with brutal clarity. Every serve and return is a discrete decision with measurable consequences. Pressure points expose systematic decision biases that erode performance exactly when players can least afford it. Understanding these patterns gives coaches and captains tools to protect automatic execution and tilt the odds in high‑stakes moments.

Loss aversion on serve: trading winners for safety

In keeping with my recent articles on decision making within golf and football, Prospect Theory explains why servers often choke on break points. Losses – double faults, games and sets conceded – loom larger than equivalent gains like aces or outright winners. Facing break point, players do not simply fear the double fault; they over‑adjust by serving safer, reducing the risk of a catastrophic loss but also shrinking their margin for winning the point.

Analyses of Grand Slam matches show this clearly. On break points, players reduce double faults (a form of loss avoidance), but their ace rates and winner percentages fall significantly. Second‑serve accuracy may improve slightly under pressure, but the trade‑off is fewer aggressive first serves and fewer free points. Overall, servers win fewer high‑pressure points than their baseline serving statistics would predict.

The pattern mirrors golf’s par‑versus‑birdie putting gap, where professionals hole par putts more reliably than equivalent birdie putts, despite identical distances and conditions. In tennis, the reference point is holding serve. Routine points allow a more natural level of aggression; break points trigger defensive conservation, with players subconsciously prioritising avoiding a break over maximising the chance of holding.

This recent body work on high‑stakes tennis has explicitly tested loss aversion. When time pressure and competitive stakes are framed in terms of losses (for example, ‘do not get broken here’), players consistently adopt safer shot selection across the board. That behaviour can compound: one tentative service game invites more pressure in the next, increasing the frequency and intensity of high‑stress points.

Choking mechanisms: when pressure disrupts automaticity

Attentional Control Theory offers a useful framework for understanding why these patterns emerge. Skilled serving is largely automatic: years of practice have tuned complex sensorimotor routines that operate with minimal conscious control. Under pressure, that balance can be disrupted through two main routes: distraction and explicit.

Distraction occurs when worries about the score, the crowd, or the implications of losing a point clog working memory. Explicit monitoring occurs when players shift attention inward and try to consciously control normally automatic mechanics, such as toss height or arm speed. Both mechanisms interfere with fluid execution.

Grand Slam data shows that high‑pressure points are associated with more errors, and that prior errors increase the likelihood of further mistakes. A double fault or badly missed first serve raises anxiety, which can push a player toward more explicit monitoring on the next point. Unforced error rates rise when recent mistakes coincide with break points for both winners and losers. Experimental work on serving under pressure shows that second‑serve accuracy can degrade under these conditions, even in highly skilled players.

One practical solution is to train and cue external focus rather than internal mechanics. When players focus on an external target – such as ‘drive the ball through the back corner of the box’ – they tend to maintain accuracy and speed better under pressure than when they focus on their arm motion or toss. Coaches can replicate pressure in training by simulating break points, adding consequences for double faults, and insisting on external cues only.

Tactical biases and the momentum myth

Pressure does not only affect serving mechanics; it also distorts tactical choices. Confirmation bias can lead players to persist with patterns that worked earlier in the match – for example, repeatedly attacking with the forehand – even after the opponent has adjusted. High‑pressure points often make players cling more tightly to these familiar patterns, reducing tactical flexibility.

Hindsight bias then colours post‑match analysis. Players and coaches frequently reconstruct a contest around one or two ‘turning points’, such as a double fault in a tie‑break, and label them as decisive mistakes. In reality, work on pressure and compounded errors suggests these visible moments sit on top of a sequence of subtle shifts in attention, confidence, and tactical risk‑taking across many games.

The popular notion of ‘momentum’ is often a narrative laid over these processes. Apparent swings in momentum frequently reflect ordinary variability plus predictable pressure responses, rather than some independent force. Statistical work on break points shows that players’ conservative serving and shot selection under pressure is broadly similar across rounds and contexts, even if commentators frame later‑round points as uniquely special.

A toolkit for coaches and players

High‑performance tennis environments can counter these biases by deliberately adjusting how players train, frame, and review key moments:

• Serve reframing on big points

Reframe break‑point serves as opportunities to execute a pre‑agreed, high‑margin aggressive pattern rather than as mines to be tiptoed through. Track ace and winner rates by pressure level, not just overall hold percentage, to reveal overly defensive tendencies.

• Pressure inoculation in practice

Regularly simulate break points and game points in training, with modest but meaningful consequences for double faults or missed patterns. Require external focus cues only (‘aim at the back corner of the box’, ‘hit through the logo on their chest’) to protect automaticity under load

• Pre‑planned tactical options

Before matches, agree two or three ‘go‑to’ serve–first‑ball patterns for pressure points, so players are not improvising under stress. This limits the influence of confirmation bias in the moment and embeds flexibility into the plan.

• Structured debriefs  

Separate analysis of pressure points from routine points in post‑match reviews. Quantify how much serving behaviour changed on break points (ace rate, double faults, location patterns) instead of relying on memory and narrative. Use this as a basis for revised training goals rather than simply labelling moments as ‘chokes’.

Tennis exposes human decision‑making with nowhere to hide. Every point offers immediate feedback. Players who learn to master loss aversion, protect automaticity, and maintain tactical flexibility under pressure do not just win more; they reliably convert pressure into advantage. Coaches and leaders who design for these realities can build environments in which their athletes thrive when others falter.

At the margin between top‑10 and top‑50, these invisible patterns often make the difference. Surfacing and reshaping them in my opinion is one of the most powerful – and underused – edges available in the modern game.

Dr Benjamin Kelly advises investors and professional athletes on decision making strategies in high stakes environments. If you would like to speak to Benjamin about his work, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.

What to read next

The Invisible Opponent: Why our Own Cognitive Biases May Present the Most Formidable Challenge

Main Photo: Getty Images

By Rob Schaefer

CiCi Bellis has made multiple careers out of an athlete’s work ethic.

At age 15, she was the No. 1 junior tennis player in the world. By four months after her 18th birthday, she’d climbed as high as 35 in the WTA rankings and reached two (of an eventual three) Grand Slam singles third rounds.

But after injuries forced her to retire in 2021, Bellis is now showing similar precociousness in a new endeavor — venture capital.

In mid-2023, Bellis launched an eponymous sports technology investment firm called Cartan Capital (her full name is Catherine Cartan). It has raised two funds — the first a $10 million pledge fund sourced from 15 investors, the second a larger fund that is nearly closed and deploying capital — and made eight investments.

“I grew up in Silicon Valley, so I felt like I was around venture from a young age,” said Bellis, 26, and an Atherton, California, native. “I grew up solely focused on tennis. … But school was always a big part of my life and something that my parents instilled in me — how important education is — from a young age. … I knew that I wanted to always have a backup plan.”

Catherine Bellis took the first set from Victoria Azarenka at Wimbledon in 2017. (Photo by Lindsey Parnaby/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Bellis initially committed to Stanford, her dream school, but after cracking the WTA top 100 as a teenager, decided to go all-in on tennis. While playing, she pursued an undergraduate degree in business administration from Indiana University through a scholarship program facilitated by the WTA — eventually giving the commencement address for her graduating class in 2022 — then got her MBA at the University of Miami.

Her first professional break came through an internship with Orlando-based Tavistock Development Co., which she parlayed into another internship — and eventual promotion to investment analyst — with leAD Sports & Health Tech Partners.

Longtime venture investor Martin Mann, now a Cartan Capital partner and the largest backer of the firm’s first fund, met Bellis through his work on the board of the USTA Foundation, but remembers being “over-the-top impressed” by her straight-shooting answers to due diligence questions after she brought him in to meet with leAD during her time there.

“When she left to start Cartan, she called me and asked me if I would be an adviser. I thought it was a little shocking that she was jumping off after only a few years in venture capital,” Mann said. “But there are some people — and they are few and far between that I’ve seen — that are just more extraordinary than humans should be.”

Cartan Capital focuses primarily on participating in Series A or later-stage seed rounds, led by other firms, across sports, technology, health and wellness. Its portfolio consists of several startups that have made waves through partnerships with major leagues and media properties, including audio innovation company Edge Sound Research, AI-powered musculature analysis platform Springbok Analytics, interactive hologram maker Proto Hologram and TGL creator TMRW Sports.

Bellis’ reputation with her portfolio companies is that of an attentive, hands-on and well-sourced partner adept at facilitating connections — whether in business development or hiring — and providing an athlete’s perspective.

“She has a determination to support all their portfolio companies,” said Edge Sound Research CEO Valtteri Salomaki. “That’s rare with a smaller fund like hers, because usually — I mean, X amount of resources, X amount of time. … For her to not only source and understand companies, but then also from there be able to support those companies, her personality is clearly [that] she cares.”

CiCi Bellis, center, attends the Break The Love and Tory Sport private celebration in honor of Women’s History Month and The Miami Open in March 2022. Also pictured (L-r): Trisha Goyal, Marissa E. Hill, Taylor Townsend, Jessica Pegula, Christina McHale and Bethanie Mattek-Sands. (Photo by Desiree Navarro/Getty Images)

Bellis also began a two-year term as a director-at-large (elite athlete) on the USTA’s board this year, where, as has become custom, she is the youngest in the room. She has distinguished herself there by serving on several committees, including the USTA Investment Committee, USTA Ventures Committee and two athlete committees.

Bill McGugin, USTA Ventures chairman and fellow board member, said Bellis has made a particular impact in deal sourcing and analysis for the organization’s venture arm, which has made three investments since launching two years ago.

“Though she’s relatively young, you feel like you’re talking to someone that’s been in the profession for 20 years,” McGugin said of Bellis. “Her awareness of the market, her awareness of financial structuring, her connections to other investment firms and opportunities. … [Working with her has] been very positive.”

Bellis said the discipline she developed as an athlete has aided her transition to her next phase.

“My work ethic and dedication that I brought from my day-in, day-out tennis career and all the hours that it takes to be a pro athlete — I was able to catch on really quickly based on the work that I did outside of work, making sure I was up to speed on everything going on and learning about venture,” she said. “Just being scrappy.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

Main Photo: Getty Images

By Joe Lemire

Discreetly affixed to the underside of the Thomas & Mack Center’s center-hung scoreboard were 12 custom-built antennas. Two more were attached underneath the baskets. They collected transmissions from a one-gram sensor embedded in the air valve of select NBA Summer League game balls, capturing movement data 400 times per second.

There were also 20 4K optical tracking cameras triangulating motion from the players and ball. A few infrared cameras operated lightly in the background. The NBA is building a new R&D lab at the G League home of the Salt Lake City Stars. The lab will feature multiple tracking systems, connected basketballs and more to test a variety of on-court technology “with the top priority being officiating,” said NBA Senior Vice President Tom Ryan.

The NBA has created an automated officiating group within its Basketball Strategy & Growth Department, hiring data scientists and engineers — led by Avinash Bhaskaran, previously of Nvidia and autonomous vehicle company Cruise — to create a new, league-operated technology stack. Its three main purposes are to improve call accuracy and consistency, hasten game flow and enhance transparency and consumer confidence.

“You’re trying to trade off speed versus accuracy versus entertainment.”

Rufus Hack, CEO of Sony’s sports businesses

A recurring refrain from the more than two dozen insiders across sports that Sports Business Journal spoke to was that human officials, referees and umpires are far better at their jobs than fans will ever give them credit for, and few are seeking full automation of officiating; just supplementary aids. But they also have an inherent limitation of using only two eyes from one viewpoint, tracking projectiles that can travel in excess of 100 mph.

“At some point,” said SMT CEO Gerard J Hall, “that technology is more accurate than any human could ever pretend it to be.”

The presence of instant replay is ubiquitous in modern sports, but there’s a newfound emphasis on using technology not to review decisions, but to automate binary calls: ball or strike, in or out, offside or not? Tennis pioneered this practice with its adoption of Hawk-Eye Innovations’ cameras for line calls, first as a challenge system 20 years ago and now often used on every shot.

Automated officiating in baseball and other sports can help bring more accuracy and quicker decisions to games. But there are downsides to removing the human element from decisions. (Photo: Getty Images)

In recent years, that idea has spread downstream — junior tennis tournaments might have an iPhone or two mounted atop chain-link fences to call lines using an app called SwingVision — as well as to other sports. Every NFL stadium now has six Sony-owned, 8K Hawk-Eye cameras to virtually measure first downs and supplant the iconic, but archaic, chain gangs.

The Premier League adopted semi-automated offside technology last spring. MLB is likely to add a new challenge system for calling balls and strikes in 2026. The NHL, X Games, NASCAR and international gymnastics have all begun using or researching automated officiating principles as well.

How, why and even whether to implement such tech is thorny. Sports is approaching a tipping point where it reckons with how much of the human element to preserve, how much technology to deploy and the right balance of the two, putting human and machine in the best positions to succeed.

“All sports are wrestling with the right way to weave technology into the officiating of the game and to get as many calls right without making the game less entertaining and ruining the game’s rhythm and emotion and humanity,” said Morgan Sword, MLB’s Executive Vice president of Baseball Operations. “And it’s tricky. Each of these decisions is fraught with conflicts.”

Protestors decried Wimbledon’s move to fully electronic line calls. (Photo: Getty Images)

Hawk-Eye is not only the trailblazer but also the primary provider of these technologies, with its cameras and algorithms able to track balls within one-fifth of an inch. Rufus Hack, the CEO of Sony’s sports businesses, shares a basic rubric for considering officiating tech.

“You’re trying to trade off speed versus accuracy versus entertainment,” Hack said.

The interplay of those three priorities varies by sport and league. He noted, for example, that accuracy is particularly paramount in short-duration tournaments, such as the FIFA World Cup, but perhaps less critical in the early throes of, say, a 162-game baseball season.

The dynamics and culture of a sport need to be considered and rigorously tested, Hack said. “Its implementation needs to be handled incredibly sensitively, and it needs to be empathetic to the values of the game because obviously people are incredibly passionate about their sport.”

The rigidity of technology’s calls also begs the philosophical question: What actually should be called? Is strict adherence to the rules always best or should there be some contextual subjectivity, such as when a police officer has the discretion to decide how tightly to enforce a speed limit?

The goal — and it’s a hard one — is not to let technology change the framework of a sport. As former NFL officiating boss Dean Blandino, who now holds that position with the UFL, said, “It’s just creating that right balance between ‘let’s get it right in those big moments’ but ‘let’s not distort how we do things for the majority of the game.’”

In the multitrillion-dollar asset class of sports, with athletes earning nine-figure salaries to play games with billions at stake in bets and broadcasts, the integrity of the competition has never been more closely scrutinized.

“The stakes are just too high not to try to solve this.”

Jeremy Bloom, X Games

As X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom, a two-time Olympic skier and NFL kick returner, described the gravity from his own playing days, “It didn’t feel like a medal was on the line. It felt like my life was on the line.” He’s now also Founder and Executive Chairman of Owl AI, an officiating tech spinoff run by the former head of AI at Google.

“The stakes,” Bloom said, “are just too high not to try to solve this.”

Here’s how leagues and tech companies are developing solutions that balance accuracy, speed, entertainment and the futures of their sports.

Accuracy

Paul Hawkins is an enthusiastic sportsman who earned a PhD in artificial intelligence in 1999 before developing a computer vision tracking system as a broadcast enhancement for cricket and tennis. Within a few years of it populating TV screens, the sports world started noticing the disconnect between what officials called and what the technology showed.

A 2004 US Open quarterfinal match in which four clearly incorrect calls went against Serena Williams in her loss to Jennifer Capriati ignited interest in a better system; Hawk-Eye was in use by the USA Network for the match.

Tennis was the first sport to embrace automated officiating. (Photo: Getty Images)

“It became more and more apparent that the umpire essentially had the worst view out of everyone,” Hawkins recalled.

Hawk-Eye was used as an officiating tool for the first time a year later and, by 2006, was adopted at the US Open. At the outset of its first Grand Slam, USTA Tournament Director Jim Curley approached Hawkins and told him, “If I don’t see you over the next two weeks, you’ve done a great job.”

“You either can deliver what you’ve promised and worked very hard to do, or it can go horribly wrong,” Hawkins said.

“You can forgive or you can understand the human making a mistake and you can get over it,” he added, “but if a computer makes a mistake, that’s then suddenly a bigger controversy.”

Early adoption followed as a reactive step in response to a controversy — Williams’ Open loss in tennis, a disallowed Frank Lampard goal for England in the 2010 World Cup for soccer — but now leagues are making large investments even for incremental upgrades. The collective-bargaining agreement between MLB and its umpires signed in December 2024 codifies the league’s right to implement ABS.

“The real goal for us has always been in the high-leverage situations when it really matters, to have an outlet where you can get a bad call corrected.”

Rob Manfred, MLB Commissioner

Challenges in MLB spring training this year were overturned 52.2% of the time, up slightly from 50.6% during Class AAA games in 2024. With roughly four challenges per game, that translates to two overturned pitches. That might not seem like much, unless one of those calls is in the ninth inning of a tied game.

“We accepted, when we first went to the instant replay system, that you’re not going to get every call right — that’s an aspiration no matter how much you do,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “The real goal for us has always been in the high-leverage situations when it really matters, to have an outlet where you can get a bad call corrected.”

ABS can input any strike zone shape, but finding consensus on what that shape should be is trickier than expected for such a fundamental part of the game. The rulebook defines a 3D shape over home plate. The plane facing the pitcher is a rectangle, but what it’s actually called is an oval. What ABS is programmed to call isn’t the same as either.

“Those are three different zones,” Sword said, acknowledging that “the zone that we actually call is dynamic and a little bit different for each umpire, a little bit different depending on the count, a little bit different depending on the pitch type. One of the challenges that has consumed a lot of time with testing ABS has been finding a static zone that will be the same for all pitches that best replicates what’s now a living, breathing thing.”

For now, ABS will adhere to the rectangle outlined in the rulebook but only call it as a flat zone at the plate’s midpoint, specific to each player’s height.

And automation calls it without bias, no matter the sport or stakes.

“You get the consistency because the AI doesn’t care who the player is, it doesn’t care if the fans are going to get upset, it doesn’t care what the money line is on the game,” Owl AI CEO Josh Gwyther said.

Speed

Goal celebrations in soccer are notoriously elaborate affairs, rituals that engage the fans and provide a natural break in the action. For officials, it’s a chance to review whether the goal should be allowed.

Those celebrations last 54 seconds, on average, according to Genius Chief Product Officer Matt Fleckenstein. “If you can actually get to a decision on whether or not someone was offside on a goal before the celebration has completed and they’re lining back, you’ve now not interrupted the fan experience.”

Expediency often helps retain viewers’ interest. “It is conceivable that a really, really hard, really, really clutch close call could be compelling for two minutes of time, but where it gets bad is when you get something that feels pretty routine, and that takes a long time,” said Phil Orlins, ESPN Vice President of Production, Technology and Innovation. “There is a shelf life on how long it feels tolerable before it becomes tedious.”

There’s a clear direction of travel, according to Bill Squadron, an Elon assistant professor of sports management. He previously led Sportvision, which created the first-and-10 yellow line in football and the K-Zone for baseball.

“Technology is now being applied to this element of the game,” he said. “It’s just being done often in clunky ways, with replays and challenges that slow down the pace and take forever.”

FIFA first used goal-line technology at the 2014 men’s World Cup, VAR at the 2018 tournament and SAOT for the 2022 edition. Enhanced SAOT, which is mostly automated, debuted at the FIFA Club World Cup. (A recent FIFA project developed AI that correctly identified 82.5% of last-touch-out-of-bounds calls, a promising start that still needs considerable refinement.)

“We are implementing technology on the field of play not to remove people, but simply to support people,” said Pierluigi Collina, Chairman of the FIFA referees committee, noting rule interpretations “are not given to artificial intelligence.”

“If we can turn a 60-second review into three seconds, and it’s automatically visualized on the broadcast and in an arena, even better.”

Tom Ryan, NBA senior vice president

The Korean Baseball Organization added full ABS for the 2024 season in part to expedite pace of play, and MLB is mindful of not giving back its dramatic gains from the pitch clock. MLB’s ABS saw an average of 13.8 seconds per challenge during 2025 spring training trials.

The NFL’s switch to a virtual first-down measurement system is said to reduce measurement time from 75 seconds for the human-carried chains to 30 seconds for the technology. The league measures about 12 times per week — fewer than once per game — but it adds up to nine minutes of weekly savings.

“Even though there’s a limited number of the virtual measurements, we are planning for what the future could potentially be,” said Kimberly Fields, NFL Senior Vice President of Football Business and Innovation Strategy, adding that the league is “lots of steps” away from using tech to spot the football. (The UFL is investigating a hybrid solution: Bolt6 tracking cameras and Sportable ball sensors; spotting the ball remains the “holy grail of problems to solve in sports tech,” Bolt6 Chief Commercial Officer James Japhet said.)

The NBA is mindful of its end-of-game pace when the strategic benefit of fouls already slows the last two minutes of a game to about seven minutes of real time. Deliberations over which of the 100 extra-long fingers last grazed a basketball heading out of bounds are tricky.

That’s why the league piloted SportIQ to see if its ball sensor might help automate those decisions. Summer League trials were “very successful,” Ryan said, and will continue in the G League.

Game flow is “very much top of mind for everyone at the league office,” Ryan said. “If we can turn a 60-second review into three seconds, and it’s automatically visualized on the broadcast and in an arena, even better.”

Entertainment

The first public demonstration of ABS took place at the 2019 Atlantic League All-Star Game. The proceedings were remarkably unremarkable. The so-called robot umpire only made one visibly jarring call — a low third strike. The hitter started to argue, only for the umpire to point to his right ear-worn AirPod, signaling it was an ABS call, not his, thereby deflating the player’s budding fury.

“I would love to see John McEnroe play with the machines,” retired tennis star Maria Sharapova recently quipped at a Bloomberg event. “He’d still find a cause for argument.”

Such argumentative theatrics are entertaining to some, but disrespectful to others. And they get trumped by what really matters.

“We are in the storytelling and drama business,” ESPN’s Orlins said. “Historically, there are elements of debate and argument over calls that are interesting, but at its core, I think the fans demand the best possible accuracy and, from a broadcast standpoint, we want transparency for the viewers as best we can. We want speed and precision.”

“I would love to see John McEnroe play with the machines. He’d still find a cause for argument.”

Maria Sharapova, retired tennis star

Technology, meanwhile, can generate a different kind of engaging presentation. Tennis fans clap in unison at the sight of a replay, cheering or booing the result. What’s shown on the video board is a conclusive 3D recreation of the ball’s landing. Hawkins explained that a tennis ball can skid along the ground for 8-to-10 centimeters, which is why the animation shows an oval, not a circle. Any single video frame will inherently be incomplete, and it’s the triangulation among several cameras that compounds the accuracy.

“It is very difficult to get video that is definitive,” Hawkins said. “The computer has made the decision, and any presentation is just there to sell the decision the computers made.”

The NBA created a similar graphic for goaltending, which is decided by a series of three discrete events — whether the ball is descending, whether it is over the rim and whether it has touched the backboard — that can be visualized.

Engendering fan support requires some transparency in the process. “You don’t want a black box,” SMT’s Hall said. ”You want to make sure it’s formulaic and it’s algorithmic, and it’s repeatable and explainable as to why this outcome was arrived at.”

The NFL replaced the chain gang with virtual first-down measurements this year, saving time during the game. (Photo: Getty Images)

One of the models underpinning Owl AI’s officiating provides a written explanation for its scoring. An evaluation of snowboarder Yuto Totsuka on the halfpipe mentioned his rotations and vertical height, while also describing his “DARING and powerful approach, all while being exceptionally SMOOTH.”

“The really tricky part was teaching the model what good style was,” Bloom said. “There’s a lot of inputs, of course, but the predominant one is what we describe as good economy of motion.”

While artistic merit would seem subjective, Owl deconstructs components of each trick. That piecemeal approach helps the AI conjure a score even for brand-new tricks — complete with a script saying why.

“We can take the collective input of the actual athletes,” Gwyther noted. “So it’s almost like they’re being judged by their peers versus an individual that has a specific thought process.”

Future impact

As Hawk-Eye first proliferated sports and met with officials, Hawkins recalled those as “fairly frosty initial meetings” that felt “very much ‘us versus them.’” In time, the contentious dynamic faded, and recently he said, “I think they do see us as all a part of the same team.”

Officials’ early fear of being shown up by technology has, in many cases, evolved into appreciation for the cover. Getting overturned can spare them public criticism.

“One of their biggest problems is the pipeline of referees,” Bloom said. “The people who want to be refs, these guys are getting death threats because there’s so much money in sports betting. Their families are getting harassed.”

Recruitment and retention of officials is already difficult. The National Federation of High Schools has described the shortage as having reached a “crisis level.” When Wimbledon eliminated its line judges, one researcher wondered if it might disincentivize those seeking to reach a Grand Slam.

“That’s no longer an option for those line judges,” said Tom Webb, a Coventry University associate professor and the founder of the Referee and Sports Official Research Network. “What does that mean in terms of enticing people into the sport, in terms of performance and development below that level?”

Technology is typically more aid than replacement. Removing objective calls from the workload of referees could help them focus more on subjective decisions.

While most hockey penalties are judgment calls, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said there’s a place for tech: “Something like offsides and high sticking, in terms of where the puck was touched — those are things that we may be able to do better with using, not just the Apple Watch or the Hawk-Eye system, but even using artificial intelligence in terms of recreating situations.”

Players are not permitted to lift their sticks above an opponent’s shoulder to strike the puck to a teammate. Tracking cameras can assess stick height, so the on-ice official only needs to see who gains possession.

Owl AI’s officiating models create commentary about the action, enabling rare transparency in sports judged by scoring. (Photo courtesy of Owl AI)

“You only have one decision to make instead of two,” said Stephen Walkom, NHL Executive Vice President of Officiating, earlier this year. “Anything that is seamless and serves the game is always best.”

While an enterprise system like Hawk-Eye’s can cost nearly $100,000 for a single tennis court, some products are leaner and more easily democratized. Owl AI runs entirely as a software layer applied to video. It used a single camera for the X Games halfpipe, with the algorithms correctly predicting first, second and third place.

The same concept could be applied to other judged sports. “The goal would be that you get that certified by an Olympic committee, and now all these nonprofessional events — like your kids’ gymnastics — can now have a professional judge behind just a webcam,” Gwyther said.

Tennis is rife with line-call issues at the lower levels, with “hooking” — i.e. deliberate cheating — so rampant it has been cited as the No. 1 reason young players quit. Now, systems such as PlaySight and the USTA-backed PlayReplay are providing results with light installations, while SwingVision operates using only iPhones.

Paul Hawkins, shown at the Australian Open in 2005, founded Hawk-Eye, a camera tracking tech provider for the MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, FIFA and tennis. (Photo: Getty Images)

SwingVision, financially backed by Tennis Australia, started calling lines at five USTA junior tournaments last summer. “There was one parent we talked to, and he said, ‘This is the first tournament where I was talking to the opponent’s parent, and we were just talking about life and we weren’t arguing about anything,’” CEO Swupnil Sahai said. “He was shocked. He’s like, ‘This is so transformational.’”

By and large, Squadron said, the reluctance to embrace more technology is less about its accuracy and more about people’s attachment to tradition.

“The human element is about the athletes, the unpredictability, the excitement about whether somebody can perform in an incredible, pressured situation,” he said. “Those unexpected errors that are so devastating — that is [part of] sports. The fact that an official doing his or her best misses a call and costs a team that’s trained, worked, performed for a championship? To me, that’s not part of the game.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

Main Photo: Getty Images

By Rob Schaefer

The International Tennis Integrity Agency has launched a new secure messaging service for players, coaches, agents and other support staff that officials say will simplify the anti-doping education and reporting process.

Branded “The Line,” the service will allow players to send anonymous messages — ranging from questions about permissible medications to reporting concerns about potential rule breaches by other players — directly to ITIA officials on WhatsApp. It was developed in partnership with anonymous communication platform RealResponse, whose encryption services are used by pro sports properties including NASCAR, the Kansas City Chiefs and IC360.

“The key bit for us is making it as easy as possible for players and agents and coaches to contact us,” ITIA CEO Karen Moorhouse told SBJ. “They’re people who are on the road, they’re traveling internationally. They don’t want to be looking up an email address or finding a telephone number to call. WhatsApp is where they’re at.”

Previously, the ITIA primarily fielded integrity-related questions and concerns through web forms, email or phone calls. “There was an extra layer that was slightly more cumbersome,” Moorhouse said. “The challenge we set ourselves was, ‘How do we make it as simple as possible for a player to get in touch with us and get the information they need?’”

She added that the recent, high-profile suspensions of Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek for anti-doping violations the ITIA found to be unintentional underscored the importance of having a better communication system in place.

“Those cases really shone a spotlight on the tennis anti-doping program, how it’s possible to inadvertently breach the anti-doping rules, and led to a lot of conversations across tennis that perhaps hadn’t previously happened,” Moorhouse said. “It got players really thinking about what steps they needed to take to mitigate their own risk of potentially testing positive for a banned substance — and then, linked to that, the importance of them getting the right information and the right education. Absolutely, some of the things that flowed from those cases strengthened and highlighted the importance of us having a system like this.”

RealResponse CEO David Chadwick said his company’s system enables users to communicate through “commonly used channels” like WhatsApp, while ITIA officials will field messages through an administrative portal. Players will be able to choose whether to enter anonymous or non-anonymous communication channels within WhatsApp depending on the nature of their inquiry (if the latter is chosen, their contact info will be shared with the ITIA on the back end).

“It makes it easier for people to be able to communicate and break down barriers in a system they trust and are familiar with,” Chadwick said. “But secondly, it allows for two-way communication.

“Through our system, the ITIA will be able to respond back to the person to ask further questions, clarify things, gather evidence, point to resources — all the while that person remains anonymous [if they choose]. They’re not having to download an app, they’re not having to call a hotline, fill out a web form, it’s as simple as them sending something via WhatsApp.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

Main image: ATP Tour

By Rob Schaefer

The ATP Tour’s player- and coach-facing analytics platform, Tennis IQ, began integrating automatically-tagged video clips ahead of its year-end finals in Turin in November and at December’s Next Gen Finals in Jeddah.

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

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By Rob Schaefer

Weeks after closing a $1.8M seed funding round, computer vision-powered coaching and analysis platform SportAI has secured its first major commercial contract, inking a deal with racquet sports booking platform MATCHi.

Through the agreement, SportAI’s offerings will be available on the MATCHi TV streaming service, which is underpinned by cameras installed at 2,000 of MATCHi’s tennis and padel courts. The integration lets players access highlights and technical analyses of match footage on their phones. In all, MATCHi has a network of more than 1M users across 2,600 venues and 14,000 courts in 30 countries.

Financial and duration terms were not disclosed.

Oslo-based SportAI was co-founded by Lauren Pedersen, a New Zealand native who is combining passions for sport and technology to democratize access to swing technique analysis – first in racquet sports but with the aim to eventually expand into the likes of cricket, baseball and beyond.

Image: SportAI

“Technique coaching, specifically, is still very subjective and expensive and unscalable,” Pedersen told SBJ in a recent interview at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, where she spent time during the U.S. Open pitching prospective clients. “If you have a tennis lesson pretty much anywhere, it’s easily going to cost $100 – and you might have a good coach, but if you had three or four good coaches looking at your technique, they would all say something different, and there would be no data to back up what they’re saying.”

SportAI’s system is hardware agnostic; its algorithms can be applied to phone or camera footage and generate overlays that chart swing curves (and compare those curves to professionals), ball strike timing and other statistics like hip or shoulder rotation and swing velocity. The system also provides textual feedback, which as of now is pulled from a matrix of preset options but could in the future tap into a large language model, Pedersen said.

Here, Pedersen demonstrates the technology analyzing her one-handed backhand.

“To get to technique analysis, the computer vision, the platform itself, has to identify the boundaries of the court, identify different players on the court, be able to pick up all the biometric movement,” Pedersen said. “Before we even get to the technique analysis, we’ve got a lot of the technical data, which provides heat maps and statistics as well. We can deliver all that, and then technique analysis or coaching on top of it.”

Pedersen is charting a B2B model for the company, wherein SportAI licenses access to its software to three key segments: racquet sports clubs and coaches, broadcasters, and equipment manufacturers. She did not disclose pricing but noted it is variable based on which analysis modules businesses subscribe to.

As a coaching tool, Pedersen asserts that SportAI can reinforce instruction with empirical data, expand coaches’ influence outside of traditional lesson hours by making swing analyses accessible remotely, and unlock incremental revenue by creating a premium digital offering coaches or clubs can charge members to use.

For broadcast, Pedersen envisions the potential to improve the less objective niches of common tennis analysis and introduce technique comparisons between players or digital twin visualizations.

Integrating with equipment manufacturers, Pedersen added, would bring the opportunity for increased personalization in matching players with the appropriate racquet for their skill level and play style.

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

By John Portch with additional reporting from Henry Breckenridge

“One of the great things about the job is there’s no typical day,” said Michael Bourne. “There’s gate posts and structures in place to keep us on track, but my job is very much to adapt to that.”

The Performance Director of the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA] was a guest on the Leaders Performance Podcast in early July, where he discussed his remit.

“I break it down as if we want to deliver performance, then performance equals the talent that you’ve got multiplied by the exposure you can give that talent to them to develop and grow, minus interference.”

When it comes to high performance, tennis has several traits that separate it from other sports and this is reflected in the LTA’s provisions. For example, the organisation offers full-time multidisciplinary support to players from under-10s through to elite level, but player needs vary from individual to individual. They provide coaching too, at camps and competitions, but players tend to have private coaches.

It is a balance and one that he has been trying to strike during his four years in the role, which began during the first year of the pandemic. “It was a huge learning curve for me,” said Bourne, whose non-tennis background has never held him back.

Here, we reflect on his thoughts about his role.

He has a firm focus on the mission

Bourne, who has worked in sports science for organisations including UK Sport, the UK Sports Institute and the England & Wales Cricket Board, has a clear understanding of what the LTA is trying to achieve and why. “Our mission is to be world-class and respected at player development,” he said. “The slightly longer answer to that is that we create a pathway for our most talented players to go on a journey to becoming elite professional players, whether that’s in the tennis game or wheelchair tennis game.” It requires continuous self-evaluation on both his part and the LTA’s as well as acknowledging how the challenges faced evolve. Bourne emphasised a people-first approach. “However you cut it up, we are a performance-based industry and you have to have great people to do great things.” He spoke of “passion and care”. “We have a team of individuals who deeply care about the journey these players are on”. Passion is one of the LTA’s values and the sight of others in service to players is one Bourne finds “very humbling”.

Michael Bourne, Performance Director at the LTA. (Photo by Shane Anthony Sinclair/Getty Images for LTA)

His role in driving change

In addition to being mission-focused and people-centred, Bourne places a premium on critical thinking. He also believes that having great ideas is one thing, but being able to apply them is quite another. “You can have the greatest thinking and the greatest ideas in the world, but if you can’t drive and implement change, then it’s for naught,” he said. “Ultimately, leadership is about being able to drive and support change.” His team bring their tennnis-specific expertise and Bourne ensures everyone is aligned around the work that needs to be done. “It gets the balance between my background and their backgrounds in the right space.”

He does not assume things will happen on their own

Bourne readily admits his expertise is not rooted in tennis. Nevertheless, the necessary traits and skills are made familiar to him through his staff. He has set up a clear chain of direct reports and basic processes, but it needs constant attention. “Don’t just trust that they’re going to happen all the time – make sure that you’re around enough and verifying whether the communication, the connection that’s supposed to be in place, is actually in place; and if you need to step in and just give the person that support or just give that reminder of what we’re trying to do to prevent those dreaded silos developing people ploughing their own furrow”.

He relishes the daily challenges

Bourne feels that his role is inherently challenging; and that’s alright. “I feel like in these types of jobs, if your job is easy, something is wrong – I don’t think they’re meant to be easy,” he said. “If they’re easy, then you’re missing something or you’re not pushing when you need to push. There’s always more.” It feeds into his attitude towards the challenges faced by the LTA. “It should be unacceptable in a high performance environment to know there is a challenge and to take no steps to do anything about it.” There will often be “brutal facts”, as he put it, “then it’s my job to ensure that we’re all leaning into that and in the right way in a professional way and in a safe way; having the right types of conversations that we need to have.”

Listen to the full interview below:

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Michael Bourne has a sports science background, so it is no surprise that he places a premium on critical thinking.

“It is core to me,” the Performance Director at the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA] tells the Leaders Performance Podcast, which is brought to you today by our Main Partners Keiser.

Critical thinking is a skill that also served him well in roles at UK Sport and the England & Wales Cricket Board amongst others before he took the reins at the LTA in October 2020 (with Covid restrictions still in place).

“But,” he cautions, “leadership for me is about change and progress, and you can have the greatest thinking and the greatest ideas in the world, but if you can’t drive and implement change, then it’s for naught.”

It starts with taking stock. “As a leader, make sure that you are ensuring everybody else is confronting those brutal facts and you’ve got to be ahead of that,” he says, adding that he too must be open to feedback.

“It should be unacceptable in a high-performance environment to know there is a challenge and to take no steps to do anything about it.”

In the first episode of this new series, Michael explains his mission-driven and people-centred approach to helping produce British tennis players with the means to compete with the world’s best [33:10].

During the conversation, we also touch upon the challenges the LTA faces and the benchmarks set [8:30]; his belief in the unique qualities of British tennis [14:30]; why the flow of information cannot be taken for granted at the LTA [38:30]; and the enduring power of the Lion King to move him [48:00].

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Main Image: the tests, which highlight the demands of being a professional tennis player, can be used to showcase the attributes of the ATP Tour’s next generation. (ATP Tour)

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By Joe Lemire

When the top eight under-21 men’s singles players convened in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in late November for the Next Gen ATP Finals, they may have helped usher in a new age of tennis — not just their prodigious on-court potential but the increasingly tech- and data-infused competition in which they participated, a harbinger of what’s to come on the men’s tennis tour.

Before the tournament began, one of the courts at the King Abdullah Sports City was strewn with gadgetry: force plates, cameras, flashing lights. The ATP had organized the first athletic combine in Tour history, called Basecamp, putting the young men through a series of NFL Combine-style drills such as the 10m sprint, vertical jump and a pair of agility tests.

For the actual tennis matches, the players were offered tracking devices — GPS trackers with conjoined heart rate monitors — with two wearing them and five others indicating they were interested to do so in the future after having more time to acclimate. In combination with the existing player and ball tracking from Hawk-Eye, with Kinexon’s data analysis platform, the ATP Tour produced a Physicality Index to measure the athletes’ exertion and effort.

All of the data collected was shared with the players and some of it was published in web stories and social media to tout their athleticism. BreakAway Data’s app was used to grant the athletes easy access to their data from matches, practice and Basecamp while ai.io’s mobile tech unit, aiLabs, provided the testing equipment.

One of the motivations for the adoption of the new tech and data from Basecamp is to support athlete wellness guidelines, such as informing mandatory rest periods between matches. (ATP Tour)

“We really want you to understand yourself a little bit better off the court and tell that story to the fans as well because I think tennis players are great athletes, but we’ve never really had anything to measure that,” said James Marsalek, ATP Tour Senior Manager for Strategic Projects & Event Operations. “All these different metrics will then help us tell a slightly different narrative of, ‘Actually, you know what, they are [great athletes] because they compare X, Y and Z on the scales with basketball, football, whatever it might be.’”

The activations around the Next Gen Final were the most acute example of a broader strategy from the ATP Tour. In 2023, Tennis Data Innovations, which is the joint venture of the ATP and ATP Media, mandated that every tournament court have player and ball tracking. In March, Marsalek said the Tour started offering raw tracking data to all players for free. In September, the ATP and TDI created Tennis IQ, an analytics platform accessible to all ATP Tour players.

Marsalek said the goal is to have video embedded and synced to the data by 2025, with integration and visualization of wearable and other biometric data on the road map as well.

“It’s trying to tell this full story where players have got this one-stop shop that has access to everything,” he said, adding, “We tried to level the playing field and provide access to all our members.”

Though the ITF, the international governing body for the sport, began permitting wearable technology in matches back in 2019, the ATP didn’t sanction it until its most recent board meeting in November. It remains contingent on the Tour platform supporting it, which Marsalek estimated should happen in the first quarter of 2024.

“The ATP have got a hugely ambitious and fantastic opportunity to make data not just relevant but really progressive for the sport,” said BreakAway Data Head of International Business Ben Smith, who formerly led research and innovation at Chelsea FC. “Tennis, with the ATP leading it, have got an opportunity to help the sport progress over the next two, three years in a way that is, I think, hugely exciting and will advance both the physicality and the quality of the sport in a way that fans should be really excited about.”

In a video summary of Next Gen Basecamp produced by the ATP Tour, Arthur Fils — who ranked first in every category — could be seen celebrating his wins, a testament to the competitive spirit even with something brand news.

Just as often, the players asked, “Is that good?” Officials from the ATP Tour, ai.io and BreakAway Data were able to share some benchmarks, but more definitive norms will be established as this combine testing grows. Flavio Cobolli, who finished top-three in three of the four tests, called it a “good experience” and was quoted saying, “I want [Carlos] Alcaraz to do this for sure.”

Alcaraz is perhaps the premier athlete on the men’s Tour right now, whose 2022 US Open title run scored highly on the USTA’s Physicality Index, and would surely be a devastating combine competitor. But while the NFL Combine and team pro days are a rite of passage for all top prospects to improve their draft standing, that incentive doesn’t exist in tennis. To induce the elite players to participate, attaching prize money or other reward is likely necessary. But the accompanying videos and data may well be a new sponsorable asset.

“We ought to be a little bit creative,” Marsalek said. “We don’t have the same sense of jeopardy as the NFL does, where there’s a lot on the line, so we need to make sure that our athletes enjoy doing it. If they don’t, there’s no content.”

All of the data collected from Basecamp was shared with the players and some of it was published in web stories and social media to tout their athleticism. (ATP Tour)

The other motivation for the adoption of the new tech and data is to support athlete wellness guidelines, such as informing mandatory rest periods between matches. In the ATP’s 48-week season, most players average about 25 tournaments and, with Masters 1000 events all expanding to two weeks, that increases the amount of travel time.

Marsalek emphasized that data will not become the sole determining factor in decisions, but it is intended to provide a balance with an athlete’s feel in a skill-based sport. The goal is to encourage the use of data but have a centralized process to govern it — which should aid all stakeholders in tennis, just as was evident in Basecamp.

“It’s genuine high performance. Yes, it’s really enjoyable and competitive, and so the athletes have a good engaging experience. But there’s also valuable insight that those practitioner teams will take and move into the training environment,” Smith said, before adding about the development of data-driven narratives for fans. “That’s just really good, interesting engagement that, I think, opens up tennis to a slightly wider market.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

A podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

“The greatest gains in S&C can be made in how you make yourself an integral part of the team,” says Johnny Parkes.

“You have to be out there with the team on a daily basis, you have to have those soft skills – I actually call them essential skills – we have to recognise that we have to make ourselves completely valuable to the team.”

Johnny, who was recently appointed Associate Head Coach of the men’s tennis program at the University of South Carolina’s men’s tennis program, is the third and final guest on this Keiser miniseries, which seeks to understand the world of S&C through a leadership lens.

He is both an S&C and a tennis coach out on the court and, in his dual role, is in no doubt about what it takes to develop the essential skills of which he speaks.

He adds: “That might mean going out there for extended periods of time, watching practices, going above and beyond and staying later after an S&C session because a guy needs to work on their hip mobility a little bit more as opposed to just shutting the practice down.”

Also during this episode, we discuss:

• • The distinct challenges of coaching youth and adult tennis players [2:30];
  • The need to give the player a voice and shape your coaching cues to them as an individual [7:00];
  • Johnny’s comfort in discussing performance topics outside of his domain [14:00];
  • Why the gamification of elite athlete training resembles a PE class [23:00].

Previous episode:

Emily Hall – Queensland Rugby League

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