Click Play Button Now to listen to our Tennis Ball Machine Conversation

Nowadays the ball machines don’t need as much attention. They’ve engineered them properly to the point where you can just set it. Even to the degree where there are little computers on the machine. That you set it through a computerized system.

Yeah we’ve got somewhere on the website a talking ball machine which is... it’s almost trying to be like a replacement opponent isn’t it?

Oh, it’s terrific. I mean it’s solving lots and lots of problems... and much more fun to use. I dread to think of the price.

Half the time you’re playing tennis against an opponent, there is communication, voice communication. And gesticulations that tell you what is happening. This ball machine, the talking ball machine, is fantastic because it doesn’t quite react to what happens to the ball, but it is talking and therefore it’s more relevant to a proper game of tennis. I think it’s fantastic. It fires it so that its service... it doesn’t hit it from a height exactly. But it’s very good you know...

Yeah. What you’re saying is that the basic requirement is that they’re consistent. If they start missing out on balls then that’s a big kind of problem especially if you’re doing a drill. But then the more sophisticated machines can start doing things like shot variation and they’re more powerful as well. So you have a bigger repertoire of shots that you can create. I mean I... there was a fantastic tennis ball machine when I was at the University of Bath. And if you set it at full power and the angle high enough, it would actually fire from one end of the court to another without it hitting the ground. It had more than ample power. And so you would have to sort of take that down, and you would be able to create... you know... a really good range of ground stroke shots from it.

It’s the regularity of feeding the ball that is very important because you can always adjust them for speed and height but it is the ball being fed out regularly that’s important.

Next Part:
Why You May Not Need an Oscillating or Variable Shot Pattern Machine >>>