Have you ever questioned whether a ball landed in or out? How fun would it be to see a replay (or to challenge a call)?

We were thrilled to have back on the podcast Swupnil Sahai, CEO of SwingVision. SwingVision is the A.I. tennis app that brings you shot tracking, video analysis, and line calling on any court, using just your iPhone!

Here’s a Transcript of our Conversation with Swupnil Sahai, SwingVision’s Founder

Carolyn: 0:07
Hi everyone. This is Carolyn and I’m here with Erin, and this is part two of our episode with Swupnil, who is the CEO of SwingVision. Swupnil has a PhD in statistics and worked at Tesla. If you want to learn more about SwingVision and their new feature called coach reviews, please go back to part one. But in this episode we start off by discussing electronic line calling. So here it is.

Erin: 0:30
So yeah, tell people where I mean, will we ever get it in league tennis?

Swupnil: 0:35
I’m very confident we’ll get it in league tennis. Yes, that’s what I want to hear, so I should continue tennis. I should continue tennis. How?

Erin: 0:40
long do we have to play until we can get SwingVision? Do we have to be 90 or 60?

Swupnil: 0:49
You should start recording every match with SwingVision already so we can go back and find all the people who hooked. No, I’m just kidding, we’re not going to do that Exactly, but no. So yeah, I guess it’s been a journey with the line calling stuff. So you know, with SwingVision today in an amateur match, you can already challenge calls using your Apple Watch, which is like pretty fun. That’s my favorite.

Erin: 1:09
Yeah, I love that feature so much I actually don’t do it in a match not to interrupt, but I will say practicing with my friends when I set it up. I love that my watch just like buzzes me.

Carolyn: 1:20
And I’m like oh, I know whether it’s in or out.

Erin: 1:27
It’s so great I’m like, oh, I know whether it’s in or out. It’s so great. I’m like it takes the and I can actually hear it. You know, like if my phone, if I’m on the side with my phone, I can actually hear the the whatever sound it makes, but the fact that it’s buzzing my watch from far away, I’m like I know right away.

Swupnil: 1:36
It just takes all the doubt out of it no-transcript, kind of check and I’ll show you a video. I’ll the ball bounces out and it will buzz your watch if you happen to be wearing a watch. But what’s cool is like, even if you don’t have a watch, you can just hear the sound, and you can usually hear it from both sides of the court if you just yeah, you can’t actually up to the max, yep, and so that’s a really fun new feature and it’s a great way to use ping vision.

Swupnil: 2:18
That’s called live line calls and you know, I would only recommend that for like social play right now.

Erin: 2:23
That’s what I do. You definitely cannot use this for any sanctioned matches.

Swupnil: 2:27
That’s our goal.

Carolyn: 2:29
Playoffs.

Erin: 2:30
Don’t bring it to playoffs yet I was going to say, I thought about sneaking to a match early one day and just setting it up randomly somewhere.

Swupnil: 2:38
But I love that, Just sneak it just put it on from the outside, yeah, but you can see if you try this out yourself in your social matches.

Swupnil: 2:44
You Just put it on from the outside, yeah, but you can see. If you try this out yourself in your social matches, you can see the vision and like pun unintended, but you can actually see, like, where this is going to go as well, that, like every amateur match will have this eventually because it’s just so accessible now on your phone. Now, in order for us to get it into like sanctioned events, we have to go through this whole like certification process, which is something that Hawkeye did to get into the slams, and so it’s almost as rigorous as what they had to go through. It’s through the ITF, so the International Tennis Federation. They’re the ones that certify any line calling technology, and what’s really cool is now they’ve released some new standards for amateur tennis for the first time, and so Hawkeye has what’s called like a gold certification, but at the amateur level it’s the silver, so it’s like not as accurate as gold, but it’s still way more accurate than the human eye. That’s basically the threshold.

Erin: 3:30
It could be bronze or whatever’s below bronze for all. I care, because it’s still better than us, like you know it’s still going to be better than our own eyes.

Carolyn: 3:40
What did you say? How much better is a camera than the human eye?

Swupnil: 3:46
I remember you said that in one of the episodes and I’ve been telling people this, it’s true. Yeah, so the main metric we look at, which is also actually the one that ITF looks at, is the accuracy for any call where the ball lands within 10 centimeters of line. That’s what they consider a close call, and so if it’s that close, the human eye is accurate about 90% of the time. So it’s like decent but not great, but most humans are like around 90. Obviously, some people’s eyes better than others, but that’s like kind of where it lands. Most are worse, yeah most are worse.

Swupnil: 4:17
It’s a skewed distribution.

Swupnil: 4:19
But, yeah, like the silver certification is you need to be at least 95% for those calls and that’s on like any line, whether it’s the baseline, the service line, a really fast serve, serve down the tee, whatever it is. So that’s kind of their threshold. And so internally right now you know this hasn’t been verified by others, it’s just been verified by us today but we’re seeing that swing vision is around 97% for those really close calls. So we’re like exceeding that threshold. Now we need to basically demonstrate that to the ITF through a series of tests and they it’s very specific like they’ll shoot a ball like really fast, right near the line, and they’ll do this on like a bunch of different lines. So they have a whole process for this and so we have to go through with that with them and and then validate the accuracy. And then what’s also exciting is we’re actually now developing a two-camera version, because for really high-level events let’s say a Billie Jean King national hardcore type of event that just happened in Barnes you want to have the ultimate accuracy for that level of an event, or a Junior Orange Bowl, which is an international-level event. So for that you can set up one phone on each side, and what we’re finding right now is, if you do that, the close call accuracy is like above 99%. So it’s just like blows the human accuracy out of the water. So we’re really excited about that. So that’s what we’re working on right now is developing that two camera system and then trying to get both of those systems certified. Hopefully we can get both. If not, like maybe at least it’d just be the two camera system, but we want to get at least like something certified and then roll that out.

Swupnil: 5:50
And then in the meanwhile we’ve also been doing pilots in parallel. So last year we did a pilot with USTA, socal. We actually officiated over 500 junior matches with SoCal last year and these were like pretty significant level events. We did a few sectionals and these were like kids from across the country coming to LA to play in these events, and so that was received really well. That was just with the one camera system and it was already received quite well.

Swupnil: 6:16
And then this year we expanded the partnership to USDA Florida. And so now we have two sections that we’re doing pilots with, and so they’re also focusing mostly on junior events. And so now we have two sections that we’re doing pilots with, and so they’re also focusing mostly on junior events. But it’s so cool Like we’ve just done a lot of hard work over the last year to basically build like a whole new version of SwingVision for tournaments where you can set up like phones on like 15 courts simultaneously and like manage all of them remotely, and then every court has an iPad as well. That’s at the net post and that’s how the players actually challenge. So they walk up and then they can challenge a call on the iPad and they can do it on their own. They don’t even need like an official to do this.

Erin: 6:54
How much did you see that happening with the juniors? Because they never believe that the ball is called this way.

Carolyn: 6:59
Yeah, I love that idea, I love it. It was night and day.

Swupnil: 7:02
I mean, it was People didn’t have to challenge that often because people were just being a lot more honest, because they know that they can be challenged and they know that they’re on video. So that right away, like you said for you, Carolyn, I think if you just started filming with Swing Vision, that already would probably change people’s behavior.

Erin: 7:23
There’s a camera up.

Swupnil: 7:25
Just knowing that it’s on tape already dissuades a lot of it. But then after that it’s like, okay, then you’re going to still have like some honest, like bad calls, because it just happens Like the ball is moving really fast and so in those situations now you can challenge, and so players would go up and challenge and we did it was really cool. It was just like the, the way that ATP, wta used to do it, where you have like three challenges per set and all that Right. So it’s that system right now. But but then, as you alluded to Aaron, like the goal is to get it to live line calls, and so eventually this system will be at a level where you don’t even need to walk up to the iPad. You’re just going to hear a sound and like it’s going to call it out no-transcript.

Swupnil: 8:19
Start seeing this at like a lot of junior tournaments, but also USTA is really interested in getting this into adult leagues as well. There’s a specific team on the leagues that’s like really interested about about this too, um and so, uh, you know we’ll have to figure out the logistics of how all that works, and maybe it’s gonna have to also be two camera system where it’s like if I’m playing someone else, like someone from my team puts up a phone, someone from your team puts up a phone, but that way it’s like feels more objective. Um, because you can imagine, if I’m just putting the phone, my opponent might be kind of like that’s a little weird, like why is just your phone making my calls, like you know? So, um, there’s a perception, at least you know, that like it could be biased. But I think if both people are putting their phones, it’s like pretty easy. Everybody has a smartphone. So, like this should be like pretty scalable and like easy for everybody to be able to do.

Swupnil: 9:02
Um, but we just got to make sure that like the experience is really good, it’s like easy to set up, everyone’s like setting up the right way so that the accuracy is good. So it’s a there’s a whole like logistics challenge behind it, but I think we’re we’re paving the way to be able to enable this at the adult level as well, and that certification is kind of the first step. So, yeah, we’ve like just started that process. There’s like a series of accuracy tests. There’s some live tests you have to do, like actually at a tournament, which we’ve basically already been doing. So we’re feeling pretty good about it, but the process takes some time and ICF has to be pretty rigorous about it. So you know it’ll take a few months, but we’re just trying to get done as soon as possible. So hopefully, hopefully, like next summer, you’ll start to see.

Carolyn: 9:40
Subvision in a lot more places. Yeah, it’s going to be. People would stop fighting.

Erin: 9:53
I mean line calls, which I think even for rec players, if we just put one camera up, you know, not even do anything with it, but just have the camera up and so that

Carolyn: 9:58
afterwards. As you said, swapneel, I can have closure of that. You know that woman said that ball was in and I called it out that I can look and be like, oh, she was right, you know, or I was wrong, or no, I was right, you know like. I just think that adds so much to the game because the times that I’ve wanted to quit tennis has been over. Nothing that has to do anything with the actual game of tennis. It’s getting into a fight over a line call or somebody saying something with lines. Is this too early, erin, for you to tell your story?

Carolyn: 10:33
Or is it too fresh?

Erin: 10:35
What which one you?

Erin: 10:36
are a cheater. Oh yeah, let’s tell it. It’s been a couple years now and see, that is a match. So I had a match. I will say not that this has the context doesn’t necessarily matter, but I’ll give it anyway. Our team had already lost the team match, so we were the last court to play.

Erin: 10:53
It was a make-up match. My partner and I played two really good players and it was a great match the whole time. They kicked our butt in the first but we felt like we played well. We went into the second, we somehow pulled that out and then in the tiebreaker they were serving to me. I was playing the outside, they were serving, they were down eight. They were serving at eight nine to me and they served and the ball went back on their side and then they flubbed it back and my partner just kind of hit it. Like you know that ugly spin over the net and both of them were crashing the net to both go for it and I stood on the baseline and my eye saw the ball. For weeks, I remember, because they yelled at me. I mean, the end all be all is. They called me a cheater and yelled at me for calling the ball the way I saw it, which they said it was definitely in, but I saw in my mind the ball behind that baseline, because I stood right on top of it.

Erin: 11:46
They literally would not shake my hand. They slow clapped and said, oh, would not shake my hand. They slow clapped and said, oh, good for you for being a cheater that you have to cheat to win USTA matches. And I was like this means nothing in my life whatsoever. And I swore that I called it the way that I saw it. I could have been wrong, but again if we had had swing vision there. I would have easily been wrong said oh no, my watch buzzed me.

Carolyn: 12:10
You’re right, that was you know whatever it was, but it would have taken away the ugliness.

Erin: 12:14
And now I’ll tell you I avoid that club going to there because I’m afraid I’m going to run into those mean women. You know that made me cry, or whatever after but, it would just take all that away.

Carolyn: 12:23
It would take that away. You could quickly look and be like oh my bad.

Erin: 12:26
I made a mistake or no, look at this is.

Carolyn: 12:30
There’s nothing you can say to that. I mean, I don’t know. We love SwingVision. We love SwingVision.

Erin: 12:36
I know that’s why I was like, please talk about League, because we’re going to need it eventually, and the technology is here. I just feel like you know those organizations, I get the certifications and all that, but we’ve got to embrace the technology that is here. You you know, at our fingertips.

Swupnil: 12:50
So yeah, but yeah, it’s, it’s funny.

Swupnil: 12:53
It’s interesting because I actually had kind of the opposite experience where sort of a bad call was made on me, but I think he was being totally honest and this was a league match a few years ago, but I still remember it and it’s like being on the other side of it too. It’s just like, oh, it’s just like so frustrating, because it’s like I know you’re being honest, but like I definitely saw that in, and so then it’s just like, oh, what, what can we do, though we can’t do anything because we don’t have like a system to override us. Like ideally, it’s just like we just kind of, you know, give up to the system’s result and it’s just so much better that way. So, yeah, that’s definitely like what we saw at these tournaments with SoCal last year and also this year.

Swupnil: 13:24
It’s just like it’s just so much calmer and I mean, I actually remember we did it at one college event too, just to like pilot with some college players because they hit so much harder and the hooking is like a lot worse in college too, but it was received super well, and I even remember hearing multiple times that they’d be like oh sorry, yeah, I guess it wasn’t Like. It was just like. They were just being genuinely like. They just got wrong. It just happens.

Swupnil: 13:48
Right and the other player was totally cool about it, so like it just. It can like save a lot of, I guess, arguments from happening.

Carolyn: 13:54
Um, and then, as you said you know it can also keep people in the sport.

Swupnil: 13:58
Yeah, yeah, exactly so hopefully it’s around the corner. But I think usd is definitely doing a good job of like really prioritizing this um, and I mean we’re not the only system. They’re testing multiple systems but ours is the most affordable, so I’m hoping at least for like league know. Certainly it’s going to be basically the only option I think that could scale.

Carolyn: 14:16
But well, we also have a question we normally ask, but you always do all these cool things, swapneel. So, and you had one time where I think it was like Andy Roddick came to the, it came and you guys were having an event and he showed up, and you guys, are eating wings and he’s watching you guys and he’s saying you always do these neat things. Has anything like that occurred within this last year, anything memorable or cool?

Swupnil: 14:40
Yeah, it’s funny. You mentioned that we actually just posted a video about this like over the weekend on our YouTube channel and it’s blown through like 100,000 views. It’s crazy. So basically, in San Diego last month a few of us, including myself, went down and met up with James Blake, another one of our investors. He’s actually the first investor he invested before Andy and we did this like funny competition where he like tried serving to us and then we just see if we could return it. Obviously, like amateurs can’t return a pro serve, but he kind of went easy on a couple of the serves just to give us like a chance um. So it was just funny to see the contrast.

Swupnil: 15:20
And I was one of the players because basically we did like a 3-0, a 4-0 and a 5-0. So I was the 4-0 um who tried to return a serve and I got two back. But he was obviously going like really easy on me on those two serves. But then the other three, like he actually tried and I legitimately tried to just get my racket on it because I would have been happy if I just get like contact with the racket. That would have made my day. I couldn’t even do that and it was just, it was insane. Like I couldn’t read his serve, I couldn’t go anywhere near it.

Swupnil: 15:45
Um, and it just shows you like just how superhuman every these guys are and and in my mind I was thinking how superhuman like Novak must be to be able to return this kind of serve so easily. I was just like, how is that even possible? So it was. It was really fun experience. James is like just such a nice guy, so it was really fun and he’s so sweet, like he was like half the time we were there he was just asking me about my baby and like, oh, what are you guys going to do? Like how’s your wife feeling? Like he was just being so nice and like so so sweet. It was just crazy, but he’s just the nicest guy. Um, but it was a really fun experience.

Erin: 16:17
Uh, we didn’t have any chicken wings, but, uh, maybe next time, yeah but think about this he’s been retired for years and he still couldn’t return.

Swupnil: 16:24
Yeah exactly, exactly like he’s even at the top of his game and right yeah, um, but yeah, we’re always trying to do fun stuff, um, but uh, yeah, the new york, the new y New York one was really cool because when we met with Andy that time that was actually like a team offsite. So our entire team came to New York and we like watched a couple matches at the US Open, and then Andy happened to be in town, because he always kind of comes around for the US Open anyway, and so I just asked him if he was down to just come say hi to the team for like 10 minutes, that’s it. Like I didn’t want to take up too much of his time, and he was kind of free that one evening. So he came over and then he happened to walk in right as we were doing this like hot wins challenge, like just like the show. So our entire team had this like funny idea like let’s do a hot wins challenge, we’re going to buy all the sauces and like see like who can get to the end, um, and so he was only supposed to stay, and he was only supposed to stay for like 10 minutes, and then he ended up staying, uh, for like an hour because he was so entertained.

Swupnil: 17:20
Um, and it was funny because we actually had uh on the big tv screen. We had tiafo playing shelton. That was like the first time they played the usf and that’s the famous like hang up, uh, match, um, and so he and he was kind of watching that and then watching us, but at one point he was just like locked in watching us. It was so funny and he was just like he couldn’t believe it and I was like you sure you don’t want to try one? He’s like no, there’s like that’s that’s not for me, um, but it was so funny, that’s how competitive he is.

Erin: 17:46
Yeah, he’s like watching you guys be competitive.

Swupnil: 17:50
Yeah so it was funny but but we gave him a good time too, I think. But he had a lot of fun and then in between he was just like people were able to kind of ask him just funny questions and stuff, so it was cool.

Erin: 18:01
He’s someone I would love to hang out with. Oh yeah, he seems really cool, and the thing is we started our podcast before Erotic right, but then he’s like number one, all the time? Yeah, of course. Why is his number one?

Swupnil: 18:12
We can’t get to number one, is it?

Carolyn: 18:14
because he can play tennis or whatever.

Erin: 18:20
Because he actually knows what he’s talking about.

Carolyn: 18:21
Yeah, like he’s won Grand Slams or whatever I know.

Erin: 18:24
We came in second a couple times to the tennis podcast the one that’s out of the UK or whatever and we’re like, yeah, we got to talk. And then, yeah, andy Roddick has to start a podcast.

Carolyn: 18:35
And then it’s like second’s the highest we’ll probably ever get.

Swupnil: 18:38
But that’s okay, ever go. Well, you can just add one. I mean, his doesn’t really count, he’s obviously going to be the number one.

Erin: 18:45
Yeah, of course, I know yeah.

Swupnil: 18:47
But aren’t you guys are in, are you guys in North Carolina?

Erin: 18:52
Yeah, we’re in North Carolina. Yeah, he’s in the mountains. He’s over there, he’s not too far from there.

Swupnil: 18:56
He’s in the mountains, yes.

Carolyn: 18:58
Connect us with him. We’ll make it happen.

Swupnil: 18:59
We’re going to do some kind of like in person like podcast and get like Andy to make a cameo there we go, we’ll make it happen.

Erin: 19:10
That’s, if we put it out to the world, it’ll happen.

Swupnil: 19:12
Maybe we can do a who can return Adioric serve and you guys can do that.

Erin: 19:18
Did you ever see that video of him playing with?

Swupnil: 19:19
a frying pan. Yeah, that was so crazy.

Erin: 19:22
He still beat someone, that was sure, did you see it? He played tennis with a frying pan, and he was still able to beat the person I think we might have talked about this before, because I thought he played with the back of it. He played with the side, the inside.

Swupnil: 19:38
Oh, we did talk about this before. Yeah, that’s right. It was like the harder side to play with.

Erin: 19:44
Yeah, you would think the backside of a cheap light frying pan, but no, he went all out. I mean he didn’t win all the points. They probably did like a pro set or something, and yeah, he’s still one. Using a hand, I can’t even hit a tennis ball in the sweet spot of my tennis racket and I play with. I don’t even play with a 98. I play with like a 104.

Carolyn: 20:04
I play with a 115. I mean, it’s big, hers is even bigger, hers is like the biggest tennis yeah, tennis racket head you can play with. And yeah, tennis racket head you can play with and I still can’t find the sweet spot, I know. But we’re old and we came to it. I mean what?

Erin: 20:19
did we play growing up?

Carolyn: 20:20
I think I could beat him in basketball, right, I’ll bet you can, or maybe my son could beat him in hockey.

Erin: 20:27
Maybe hockey yeah your son could maybe beat him in hockey, but I don’t know. He’s just a pure athlete, his wife actually did a funny thing too, because she’s super competitive and she did this whole thing. Their kids play baseball. He filmed her and he was like you cannot. She was like you got to be able to slide into a base. How difficult can that be? And so he made her put on a helmet and slide and it was a disaster.

Erin: 20:50
Oh gosh, but yeah we’ll just drive up to the mountains and do a podcast with him. I’m sure he’d love it. I’m sure he would. It was like when we met Jack Sock and Carolyn said to him she said we play. Didn’t you say like we play tennis too? Yeah, we saw him at the CVS. And it was like after yeah, we saw him at CVS in New York. It was at the US Open.

Carolyn: 21:09
So she said yeah, tell us that story Remember I saw him and I go I think that’s Jack Sock but I was like I don’t want to bother him and Aaron’s like let’s go get a selfie.

Erin: 21:17
There was four of us and we were all in the CVS in different spots, like one was getting chocolate, one was here, whatever, and I think our friend Rachel, who usually is in charge of everything, she captains all of our teams, she’s like the you. Just I think Carolyn said that was Jack Sock and I said go get him right now. And she went, boom and went, and then, yeah, the four of us took a photo with him in the cereal aisle or something.

Carolyn: 21:39
But I told him. I was like we’re not weird, we’re tennis players too.

Erin: 21:44
And he was like okay, ladies, that’s so funny Like tennis players in air quotes.

Carolyn: 21:52
We play rec tennis, so we know what it’s like. That’s funny.

Swupnil: 21:56
I actually had almost the same interaction with Jim Currier years ago. So when I first met Andy the very first time I ever met him to pitch him about Swing Vision, he was playing this I guess it’s like this Legends matches that they do like McEnroe would play, and so I got to meet McEnroe as well and Jim Crear and I kind of like pitched recognition to all of them and like McEnroe was not interested at all, but at one point Jim and I you know he was like he hates line calls anyway.

Erin: 22:26
So he was not interested. Right, that would be a funny one to have as an investor.

Swupnil: 22:34
I know it would have been great we could have gotten so much good content. Oh man Right, Maybe it’s not too late. We’ll see.

Carolyn: 22:38
We’ll see he may want to get on board now.

Swupnil: 22:41
Maybe we’ll get into his academy in New York first and then we get up to him.

Erin: 22:44
We’ll figure it out someday. There you go yeah.

Swupnil: 22:48
But with Jim it was interesting we had. He was asking me about my tennis background and so I was like, oh, you know, I’m just like amateur, Like I played growing up, Like I have a lot of fun, I like watching it, but I’m not, you know, obviously not your level or anything like that. He’s like yeah, he’s like just like me Like I’m not your level and like stats, but I just do stats on.

Erin: 23:07
TV.

Carolyn: 23:07
I was like that’s pretty good.

Swupnil: 23:08
I was like that’s so accurate.

Carolyn: 23:11
We love speaking with swap nail. I have been using swing vision and I thought my opponent called the ball out when it was in and I went back and looked and my opponent was right. So I realized I am part of the problem and I will no longer be questioning anyone. Online calls Also, as mentioned in our previous episode, if you use a referral link, the pro subscription goes down from $180 to $150 for the year and includes the new swing stick for free. In addition, for coach reviews, there’s going to be a 10% discount on every player’s first review, and this is a limited time offer. Thanks so much for listening and hope to see you on the court soon.

Here are past episodes we have recorded about SwingVision: