What if your heated disputes over line calls were a thing of the past? And what if an AI umpire took charge of scorekeeping, making the game smoother and more enjoyable for all? That’s exactly what we’re exploring in our conversation today with Swupnil Sahai, CEO of SwingVision and their magic tennis technology (part three).

SwingVision is the A.I. tennis app that brings you pro-quality shot tracking, video analysis, and line calling on any court, using just your iPhone!

Grand Slam Experience to Any Court in the World

SwingVision is not your regular tennis app. It brings the grand slam experience to your court with improved AI accuracy for line-calling and offers a unique way to review matches, distilling hours of gameplay into a 15-minute video.

Record Your Tennis Game with SwingVision

All you need to do is set up your iPhone behind the baseline and SwingVision will automatically track the stats of all the players on the court, generate highlights of the best rallies and shots, and you can even use it to call the lines now.

This is truly MAGIC TENNIS TECHNOLOGY and it will blow your mind!

Here’s a transcript of our discussion:

Carolyn: 0:06
Hi, this is Carolyn and I’m here with Erin and this is our final episode with Swupnil. If you would like to learn more about SwingVision and the cool features they have for line calling and the ball machine, please check out parts one and two, but here is part three. The other part, besides line calling, that I don’t like about adult recreational tennis is keeping up with the score. Are you guys doing anything with the score?

Swupnil: 0:29
Definitely so I mean in terms of real time scoring, we haven’t cracked that yet. But what we have added, which is pretty cool innovation it’s currently in beta, we’re going to roll it out to the public, probably in Q4 this year, so like probably October, november is that you can record your match and then input the final score. So like say, there was like six, three, six, four and then SwingVision will automatically figure out what happened on every single point. It’ll add a scoreboard onto your video, like a professional looking scoreboard onto your video. It’ll calculate all of your match stats for you, like break point conversion, like how often did you win on first serve, how often did you win on returns, on the first return, second return, all that stuff. So it calculates all that for you. And then you can even like apply filters to your video. You can see, like show me all the break points, show me all of, like the first serve points, and so it just makes it so much more powerful than to basically like auto score your match effectively, which is what we’re doing now. So that’s kind of the first version of this. So it’s sort of like retroactive, so at the end of the match you get all this awesome information. But the goal for us long term is to be like an AI umpire, and so we would actually score in real time. To get to that point, the line calling needs to be like really, really good in all scenarios, whether it’s a close call or an easy call and there’s actually some easy calls that the app still struggles with. But once we get those kind of resolved, then we could actually keep scoring real time. So, like, as soon as the ball lands, it’ll make some sounds, play like a flash on the phone or something to call the ball out, just like Hawkeye Live, and then it’ll actually announce the score and update it for you, and so that will solve the scoring issue. So that’s really the long term goal. With that, with that part of experience, I think it’s going to take some more time to get there, because there’s like a long tail of like edge cases that we have to worry about. But yeah, if we can crack that, then we basically become an AI umpire. I think that’s really exciting, not just for, like avid players today, but even, like you, people trying to get into the sport. For a lot of people, this scoring system is really weird 40, 15, like what is that? You know?

Erin: 2:20
you wouldn’t have to worry about that.

Swupnil: 2:22
And your phone would just keep score for you. Like you know, you shouldn’t even have to worry about what the scores are, like remembering the score. Again, like in any other sport, there’s a ref that’s keeping score. You’re not announcing the score Like that’s not a thing in like any other sport, right? So it’s kind of silly that it’s still a thing in tennis. So we’re going to change that as well, but that’s going to take a little bit longer. But it’s like you know it’s coming soon, so I’ll work it out.

Carolyn: 2:44
Oh, I’m excited about that. I mean, think about kids that play and that. You know. We’re always told that. Oh, because I’ve talked to people about this before, where I don’t want my children to play because I don’t want them arguing over line calls and the other people normally say no, it teaches them about, you know how to yeah, yeah, yeah that in life. And let me tell you my eight year old does not need to argue over a line call Like I don’t believe that. You know, I think tennis is great. That’s just the one downside of tennis, and this can take that away.

Erin: 3:16
People quit. Yeah, people quit too because they get frustrated, and so this will take so much of the frustration out of the game. I think that’s, you know, because people do. There are just some people that just inherently think they’re being cheated on everything and this, will you know, this will kind of prove one way or the other. I guess you know, maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but I do think it’ll keep people playing. You know that maybe would have instead been frustrated and just given up. But now there’s going to be, I think, like you said, it’s just going to sort of be, you know, adopted kind of easily across the board at some point when the technology is even further along.

Carolyn: 3:52
And Claire from me and my racket podcast on and she said she was up five two in a set and her opponent said no, I’m actually up five two. And there was and so the official came over and made them start at a score they agreed upon, which was two, two and yeah. And we had Francie Bergen on too and she said she had a similar situation. So I can’t imagine, as a junior, dealing with that, and so I would think, having a camera up there, being able to go back and be like no, let’s, let’s bring this down now and figure that out would be helpful.

Swupnil: 4:27
Yeah, that’s incredible, and I mean I was thinking like even obviously, yeah, having an eight year old, having to argue that eight year old is not good. But then imagine when the parents get involved, right Like your parents are like getting involved.

Erin: 4:37
They’re getting heated.

Swupnil: 4:38
Like that’s just like traumatizing. When you’re a kid, like you should not have to experience that. So there’s like so many problems and I just get frustrated when I see on like Twitter some of the calls that these guys make in college tennis. It’s like so blatant cheating, like it’s so obvious. It’s like I’m not even in the magic. I’m frustrated. I’m just like how can like someone actually do this? Like this is so clearly in or whatever right, like it’s just crazy. So, yeah, there’s a lot of problems, but it’s like seems like it’s going to all be solved with the don you, which is awesome. So yeah.

Erin: 5:09
So before we wrap up about swing vision, let’s mention pickleball because there are a lot of pickleballers out there and a lot of tennis players that that play pickleball, so tell us the. I know you want to bring bring the app to more people, so you want to talk about that.

Swupnil: 5:24
Yeah, definitely. I mean, that’s the sport that’s just been growing so quickly and, yeah, it’s been just exciting to see like more people going into record sports in general. I know there is some friction, for sure, between tennis and pickleball, but overall I think it’s good for record sports community and I think in the long term I’m bullish that it’s going to help tennis ultimately, because I think like, if you’re going to do play pickleball more and more, eventually will migrate to tennis at some point. So I think that’s really exciting and so, yeah, we see that as a huge opportunity. It has all the same sorts of problems. They also have like line calling issues, also scoring issues. The scoring is like even weirder in pickleball. So I think that we can solve all the same problems the same way. You know, even today I mean we’ve been on the market like four years. I mean no one’s made anything like swing vision for like basically any sport. So they’re a big lead there and we’re going to kind of bring our knowledge and experience over the pickleball. So we are launching that in Q4 this year itself. So it’s coming really soon and kind of from day one you’re going to have the same experience. You’re going to get all the dead time removed. You’re going to see all of your stats, you can see those heat maps on the video and you’ll go to challenge line calls. So it’s really kind of all the same stuff from day one. And, yeah, we’re just really excited to kind of become a multi-sword product for the first time and so it will be all in the same app. The good news is, if you’re a tennis player, you won’t really see it too much. It’s pretty hidden. It’s just going to be like a setting that you can change, so it’s not going to be super visible. And then, if you’re kind of like a new customer, down in the app for the first time, they’ll be like a question just asking you like what sport do you play? So that’s pretty much it. So don’t worry, if you’re a tennis player, it’s not going to take over the space in real estate, at least in your diesel real estate. That’s right. So you get there and we’re keeping the same logo. So it’s a really nice logo, so we definitely want to stay true to our roots, because the tennis community is definitely the ones that were our early adopters and allow us to get to this point. So we’re going to always pay tribute to them. But yeah, this is just the first expansion, and then I mean going into next year, we want to go to Paddle. So that’s growing so quickly in Europe, south America. I was just in Africa, I was playing it there in South Africa, so it’s really taken over kind of globally and that’s a really fun experience for to watch, and so you know we’re going to bring it to them as well, but that’s probably going to be in 2024. We probably need to go to Android first as well before we do that, but that’s really kind of our vision going forward. What I’m intended is to bring this to as many sorts as we can, and you know, racket sorts are very similar to tennis. So that’s probably where we’ll start. But who knows, maybe someday we’ll go into baseball or soccer or something. So I think there’s a lot of potential for the company down the road if you really want to pursue it, but taking it once for a time.

Erin: 8:00
Okay, to wrap up, can you tell us the best advice you’ve ever received?

Swupnil: 8:04
And I’m sure you’ve received a lot of good advice, but oh man, I mean, I think the best advice it’s probably more like product or business related, but for me it was just like build something people want, and that’s really what we did with swing vision. You know, we didn’t try to just build like the thing that everyone else is trying to build and, you know, just build something for the sake of like using technology or like, you know, using AI or whatever it is you know latest hype thing that’s going on. It’s just like build something people want. So that was like for us at least. You know the advice I always took true to my to my heart, and so anytime customers reach out to us about something, if they clearly want it, they clearly have demand for it, then we’re gonna build it and that’s just like always been our mantra. I think that’s swing vision too. I think that’s that’s definitely the best advice I forgot and I’m glad we’ve like followed that and Actually, both of them people want and I guess, in our case, build something that people need. You know I’m not just one, so that’s like when you’re building something truly special. So I think we did that, which is, you know, awesome.

Carolyn: 9:03
You definitely have. I remember complaining to my husband after playing Recreational tennis for years about how I don’t like the line calling and I don’t like keeping up with the score, and I remember him telling me that I was never going to be good enough to not have to do that. And so I feel like swing vision is taking that away, like I’m finally gonna get to the point where line calling is not gonna be that big of an issue or Losing track of the scores is not gonna be that big of an issue anymore in tennis.

Erin: 9:28
So just have to play. You just have to play and concentrate on that.

Carolyn: 9:32
Yes.

Erin: 9:32
Yeah, imagine that, right it’s like such a foreign concept for test players, but that’s like yeah exactly wait, yeah, wait, I’m not gonna get in a fight today on the court. Vision took my fights away.

Carolyn: 9:48
That’s right, that’s right, or all the animosity, everything that happens when, I don’t write court where you’re like, what am I doing? I’m not gonna argue with this person, I mean it takes all of that away. I just think it’s great Swapnil. Can you also tell us your most memorable moment with swing vision so far?

Swupnil: 10:03
Oh man, I’m most remember, my most memorable moment. So you well, okay, I think, like on this journey it actually just happened when we were in New York. So we’ve had lots of cool encounters with celebrities, you know, and erotic James Faker, earliest investors but I thought it was so cool so we just went out to New York as an entire team. So I thought our entire team is our first ever retreat. It was like 20 of us out there at the US Open. We watched a couple matches and in the last night of the retreat that we were there, we did a hot ones challenge. So we all got together at one of our employees apartments and we were just having these like hot wings and like getting progressively spicy. And then an erotic actually stopped by and joined us and he saw the whole thing. It was so crazy and he was so nice. Like he was only gonna stay for like a drink and leave, but he was so entertained by what we were doing. He’d never seen anything like it. I mean, I’m he’s like thousands of like sponsorship events and stuff right in his life and and we weren’t even paying him to come. So like he was really just coming because he was nice, but he was so entertained that he stayed for like an hour. It was so nice and we had like the Sheldon Tiafo match going on at the same time, like right next to that, but he was actually watching us more, so good. He did not participate, he refused, he was like no, no, I’m from the breast. I feel like they can’t handle this. But he was very entertained and I was really proud of our team. Pretty much everybody made it all the way to the 10th sauce, which is like pot, as one or you know. It’s a good progression of potter sauces, so it was very impressive. But that was just a fun memory and I think our team really loved it. Obviously just meeting each other, but having any there was like extra specials, so that was. That was really cool and, yeah, I think I’m never gonna forget that.

Carolyn: 11:42
We really appreciate Swapnil coming on the podcast to talk about SwingVision – magic. tennis technology (part three). If you’d like to get a free swing stick, which is $100 value, with your first year of SwingVision Pro, we hope you use our referral code. That’s in our show notes. Thanks so much for listening and hope to see you in the courts soon. Thank you.

Tennis Warehouse’s Tip of the Week

We hope you’ve heard some of our Tennis Warehouse’s Tip of the Week segments with Michelle. Use discount code SECONDSERVE in your Tennis Warehouse cart and get $20 off clearance apparel orders over $100. Clearance apparel can be found here!

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Ep. 118: Gear Talk with Tennis Warehouse’s Playtester, Michelle (Ep. 1)
Ep. 119: Gear Talk with Tennis Warehouse (Ep. 2)
Ep. 120: Gear Talk with Tennis Warehouse (Ep. 3)