As someone with vast experience using this tennis video-tracking app from the perspective of both a player and a coach, this 2023 SwingVision review should help you decide if it’s worth trying out for yourself. While I specialize in coaching junior players, I learned about Swing vision through playing semi-competitive tennis a while back with some friends. My buddy brought his iPhone mount to the court, attached it to the fence, and we played a few sets of mixed doubles. After the match, he sent me a link to the recorded video. When I watched it, I was blown away – here’s why!
What is SwingVision?
SwingVision is an app for your iPhone that allows you to track nearly every element of your tennis game. The tennis tracking technology uses your phone camera to record an entire practice session or match. Then, SwingVision cuts out the time between points and generates a condensed highlight video. In this video, you will be able to view an abundance of statistics related to your play. These include where your shot location, player positioning (stay out of no man’s land!), shot speed, stroke type, spin type, and more.
While the AI tennis tracking software is utterly advanced on the backend, the setup process is surprisingly simple.
- Launch the SwingVision app on your iPhone, select your session type, and press “Start”.
- Securely insert your iPhone into the SwingVision mount.
- Extend and attach the mount to the top of the fence behind the court’s baseline.
If you have an Apple Watch, you can connect it to SwingVision to ensure the court is properly framed by your iPhone’s camera. After this, you’re ready to start hitting!
As previously stated, this technology is far more than just a way to film yourself playing tennis. Let’s dive into the bag of tricks that SwingVision offers players and coaches.
Breaking Down SwingVision's Features
When you load the SwingVision app on your phone, the first screen that appears (after creating a free account) is the “Record” user interface.
As you can see, there are 4 session types you can record, in both singles and doubles formats: Rally, match, serve practice, and ball machine. If you are recording a rally or match session, there’s an option to add your opponent if they have a SwingVision account. This allows your opponent to access the recording without having to manually invite them after your hitting session.
Coach Access Accelerates Improvement
One of my favorite features of SwingVision is the fact that you can give video access to your tennis coach. Coaches like myself have busy schedules and we are not always able to be there in person for our player’s competitive matches. As any athlete knows, practice and competition are two different things. Bad habits and old tendencies frequently resurface in the biggest moments of junior players’ matches. SwingVision’s coach access allows me to assess if my players are using the proper techniques and strategies that we emphasize in practice. If they aren’t doing so when it matters most, then I know exactly what to focus on in our next practice session!
Shot Stats: Tennis Ball Speed, Spin, and Placement Tracking
SwingVision tracks a comprehensive set of statistics and performance metrics to provide valuable insights to players. Benchmarks can differ depending on your session type; this image shows stats from a ball machine practice. The tennis tracking software focuses on key metrics of player performance including:
1. Shot type and count: SwingVision automatically categorizes each shot into forehands, backhands, volleys, and serves (first and second). A donut chart is then automatically created, which summarizes the proportion of each stroke type.
2. Shot accuracy and placement: The app then does a deeper breakdown of the depth and location of shots, tracking how many times your ball landed within the court or outside the boundaries. As shown on the right, shots are segmented based on if they were hit cross court or down the line. I like this feature because it consistently reminds me that I need to work on my down the line accuracy.
3. Spin measurement and distribution: SwingVision measures the spin you apply to the ball for each stroke, such as top-spin, slice, and flat (no spin). After your session is recorded, a shot spin distribution chart is generated. This can help you gauge if you’re relying too much on one particular spin type, suggesting you could benefit from increased variation.
4. Ball speed: The hard-hitting grunters of tennis love this feature. SwingVision calculates the average speed of each shot (this is different from how shot speed is calculated on TV), allowing players to assess the power and effectiveness of their strokes. Tracked ball speed is accurate within 10%.
5. Serve statistics: In match play, SwingVision is able to tell the difference between first and second serves. I like this because it gives me insight into which serve type needs work (the answer is usually both). The app also measures serve speed, aces, double faults, percentage of serves in, and points won on first and second serves.
6. Rally Duration: Perhaps you prefer having long rallies with your friends, rather than competitive matches. SwingVision can track how long your rallies are, the proportion of long to short rallies, the number of shots in your longest streak, and more. As I always tell my players, consistency is key!
7. Player positioning: I get really tired of shouting “stay out of no-man’s land!” to my junior players (and occasionally to myself). SwingVision’s AI tracks where you are standing on the court when you hit your shots. It’s super helpful to see how often and when you’re out of position during point play.
8. Huge variety of match statistics: This is where you can gather some really valuable data. SwingVision keeps track of match results while breaking down how points were won or lost. In my opinion, the unforced error tracking is the most useful. In the midst of competitive matches, we don’t tend to reflect on how we’re losing points, instead opting to focus more on the next point. As you can see in the chart below, team Grayson & Nadal had more winners and minimized double faults; however, their backhand unforced errors led to their demise against Federer and Monfils.
By tracking all of these stats and compiling them into an easy-to-understand interface, SwingVision offers players and coaches valuable insights into their performance like no other technology can. Of course, the iOS app offers much more than mere numerical data. Let’s review SwingVision’s video components.
Video Features and Filters: Tennis Highlights Galore
One of SwingVision’s central benefits is obviously the video produced and edited without the “dead time” in between points. This saves a ton of time when recording competitive matches or friendly hitting sessions.
A SwingVision review wouldn’t be complete without an actual demo of the technology in action. The video below shows me using SwingVision in a ball machine session. Dead time removal is not as big of an issue when using a ball machine, but thankfully it still cuts out the ~15 minutes of picking up balls. Watch this brief segment of my hitting session and take note of the court tracking map and individual shot statistics at the top right.
You may have noticed I am only hitting forehand groundstrokes in the video. This is because I used SwingVision’s filtering options, choosing to only include forehands that were hit in. The spray chart in the upper right corner can often give you helpful insights into your game. In this case, it hints that I should work on increased depth with my forehand groundstrokes. I typically don’t pay too much attention to the speed metrics, but it can be fun to track how much your velocity increases over time; more on long-term progress tracking later in this SwingVision review.
The above video was exported from SwingVision. When viewing your recordings on the iPhone app, there will be a row of handy controls in the bottom left corner. Here’s what they do:
Play
Play or pause the video to assess form, positioning, and placement.
Filter
Choose stroke types, spin types, directions, and results to watch.
Speed
Analyze your form in slow motion or view points at double speed.
Include
Pick certain points or shots to include in exported videos.
Favorite
Mark your favorite points to create an ultimate highlight reel.
Share
Create a shareable link or export a downloadable file for your video.
I find myself using the shot filtering feature on a frequent basis, especially when I am coaching junior players. Speaking of…
How SwingVision Helps with Coaching Junior Players
When I coach intermediate to advanced junior players, I use SwingVision more often than not. The technology helps me coach more effectively, develops my player’s skills faster, and leaves parents with an easily-sharable highlight video of their son or daughter. This portion of the SwingVision review will discuss some of my favorite coaching features of the tennis tracking app.
Shot Tracking and Statistics Enable Me to Personalize Coaching
Even world-class tennis coaches have a difficult time comprehensively assessing every element of a player’s game in live-action. It’s easy to miss a bad habit developing, which could eventually transform into a glaring weakness that opponents can exploit.
By being able to quickly peruse through the highlights of a practice session, tennis coaches can pinpoint these issues and create a custom plan for the player to correct them.
For example, a few months ago I was coaching an advanced junior player, focusing on improving their return of serve. I was feeding them tennis balls closer than usual from around the net, so I could really focus on their swing mechanics. After finetuning my student’s follow-through motion, and placing more emphasis on quick footwork, I felt that their return of serve had improved considerably.
Later on when I was reviewing the SwingVision highlights, I noticed that I had completely missed something. By overly focusing on my player’s swing technique, I had disregarded an important part of their serve returns: the depth of where their shots landed. While SwingVision’s ball tracking showed that their returns were consistently “in”, almost all of the returns landed around or before the service line. This is a big no-no when it comes to competitive junior tennis, as most advanced opponents would take advantage of a shallow return by aggressively closing in on the net and eventually finishing the point with a well-placed volley.
Although SwingVision’s “Shot Stats” revealed that 84% of forehands and 79% of backhands were in, the shot tracking map showed an abundance of dots right around the service line. The eye test confirmed these shallow returns when re-watching the highlight video.
Can you guess what we focused on in our next private lesson? Depth of service returns!
SwingVision’s shot tracking map and analytics can help coaches notice player tendencies they might have missed, and in turn provide them with a tailored plan for improving.
Visual Learning Speeds Up Development of Tennis Technique
The vast majority of young tennis players respond better to visual learning, as compared to just being told what to do. Superb tennis coaches will usually demonstrate how to hit various strokes themselves before inviting their young players to attempt it. This is an imperfect tactic however, as it’s not easy for an adult 6+ foot tennis coach to perfectly mimic how a small child should be swinging their racket.
By showing my junior players close-up videos of themselves hitting forehands, backhands, volleys, and serves, I’ve noticed they are able to quickly comprehend what’s working and what they should improve thanks to the clarity that comes with visual learning.
Gamification: Turn Repetitive Drills into a Fun Game
I’m a big fan of using the SwingVision app to “gamify” serve practice and ball machine sessions with my junior players. When using “Goal Mode”, you can select up to two areas of the court for the player to aim for. I personally use this tool to help my students practice serving to the opponent’s backhand by selecting the “2” and “4” zones as pictured. SwingVision lets you customize various settings for the game; I enjoy using the optional sounds when a shot lands inside or outside the target zone, as it provides the player with instant positive or negative reinforcement.
Progress Tracking: SwingVision Holds You Accountable
Tennis players young and old need to string quality practices and matches together in order to truly improve. I’ve seen players have a major breakthrough for improving one of their strokes in a practice, only to divert back to their previous bad habits in the following session. SwingVision’s progress-tracking capabilities can help prevent this to an extent. By measuring the percentage of balls in play (and their depth) for any particular stroke, these trend graphs can clue you in on if you’re staying consistent with proper technique, or going back to old tendencies without thinking.
Why Tennis Parents Love SwingVision
Heaps of positive feedback I received from tennis parents is partly why I decided to create this SwingVision review. Most parents of the junior players I coach don’t have the time to stay and watch their children play tennis for an hour or two. The majority of parents would like to, but it’s just not realistic.
That’s where SwingVision’s core purpose comes into play: the ability to record the entirety of a tennis lesson, transform it into a highlight reel through AI, and then effortlessly share it with the player’s parent.
It’s a super underrated benefit of using SwingVision from a youth tennis coach’s perspective. It allows parents to follow along with their son or daughter’s progress and see how much fun they’re having on the court. All of the parents I’ve sent recordings to have been grateful; the link-sharing system is so simple that even grandma and grandpa can get in on the action!
SwingVision Apple Watch Features
If you have a compatible Apple Watch, then you can extract even more value from SwingVision. The most notable watch feature is the line-calling mechanism. Nobody is perfect at making the correct line calls 100% of the time; If you’re playing a singles or doubles match while recording with SwingVision, then you can achieve complete accuracy for those iffy calls. After a point is over, you have the option to “challenge” the call on your Apple Watch. A zoomed-in replay of where the ball bounced from a birds-eye view will play, allowing you to easily determine and select if it landed in or out. The tracked game score will be updated based on the results of the challenge.
Wearing an Apple Watch on the court also makes the SwingVision mount setup process simpler. After mounting your phone on the fence, your Apple Watch lets you see if the camera is aligned properly. Don’t fret if you’re lacking a compatible watch though, as there’s an option to set up the mount using audio-guided feedback where your phone’s speakers will instruct you to adjust the phone to the left, right, up, or down.
Drawbacks of Using the SwingVision App
As it stands, the main downside of SwingVision is that it’s not currently accessible to everyone.
Unfortunately, the SwingVision app isn’t currently available on Android devices. However, the company plans on creating an Android version at some point in 2023.
You don’t need an Apple Watch to use SwingVision for it’s primary purpose. Though if you prefer to be able to use your watch to check the camera view, pause and resume recording, and track the game score, then you will need an Apple Watch Series 4 or newer. Meanwhile if you want to take advantage of the advanced line calling feature, then your watch must be a Series 5/SE (1st gen) or newer.
SwingVision Review: My Verdict for Coaches and Players Alike
Is SwingVision worth using in 2023? I think it depends on your goals for tennis. If you’re looking to truly enhance your tennis game and track your performance, SwingVision is a great tool for both players and coaches to consider. Frankly, it doesn’t matter what level of tennis player you are. Professional players like Andy Roddick use SwingVision to perfect their craft, but I would argue it’s even more effective at helping beginner to intermediate level players improve. This is because watching yourself develop tennis skills on video really aids in spotting and eliminating bad habits early on, with guidance from a tennis coach.
I wouldn’t recommend SwingVision Pro to those who only play tennis on a casual basis, lacking a strong desire to improve with every hitting session. SwingVision’s artificial intelligence accomplishes a whole lot, but if you don’t proceed to comprehend what the app teaches you and make changes to your game accordingly, then you’re not making the most of what the tennis tracking technology provides. Although if you fall into this group with your main intention being to record and create tennis highlight videos without dead time, then it’s certainly worth it!
All in all, I am a massive fan of SwingVision for both playing and coaching tennis. If you would like to try it for yourself, Use this Link for an Exclusive FREE 45-Day Trial of SwingVision Pro. I hope this SwingVision review helped you determine if it’s worth giving the tennis tracking app a shot!
