We understand the power of the BabPop Sensor
The BabPop is a sensor that uses an accelerometer and and a gyroscope to record tennis strokes. It is built with, by present day standards, antiquated hardware. But, that didn't stop the designers from packing impressive functionality in their app.
We can even use some of the aspects of their analysis to provide ideas for our dashboards. Through that we've seen that we can track both momentary shot by shot data, and overall historical trends.
But, we all know we came here for the matches!! But, for reference, let's start with a practice visualization:
Practice visualization
Let's recap a typical practice seesion:
Usually 100 strokes total. Start with serves, alternating 1st and 2nd. Then, hit groundstrokes 10 at a time, sometimes alternating sides and sometimes focusing on the same side.
This fits the pattern. Remember, this is PIQ, which is best understood as a quantification of a stroke. The higher the PIQ the better, and the three categories are power, spin, and style.
The serves are consistently the highest PIQ shots for this player. They average around 7000 PIQ +/-1000 and there does seem to be some variability between the first and 2nd serves. The player in question swings just as hard for each shot, so it's not expected to be a strong difference.
The other difference is how quickly the forehand and backhand strokes are in succession, since they are hit rally ball style. There is also a much higher variance, as the shots range from 3000-6000.
OK, I hear you. We're finally ready for a match!!
Notice how the PIQ scores are higher overall?
The player in question says that this was their best match. I'm not surprised, look at the difference! Now all the shot average around 7000, matching what was in practice only the serve.
Also, notice the clustering. Instead of grouping, all the shots are only grouped by time. Closer analysis would probably indicate that rallies start with serves in serve games, but this is probably too much detail.
The takeaway is that increasing groundstroke PIQ correlates strongly with improved performance.
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