Racket Sports Tech 10/2026

Table of Contents

• Ashley’s Tech Blog

  • The Intelligent Club: Who Owns Your Player Relatio …

• Sport AI - A 21st Century Teaching Aid

• CourtsApp Press Release

• SGI: New HEAD Racquet Release

• iPlayMe2: Discover what’s new + improved, and what …

• Putterman Athletics: Gym Floor Cover Solutions Hel …

• Natty Hatty: Full Courts Are Not a Schedule - Book …

The Intelligent Club: Who Owns Your Player Relationship?

By Ashley Owens

You built the courts. You hired the instructors. Your team welcomes the players, runs the programs, and creates the experience people come back for.

As you plan for next year, ask yourself: how much of that player relationship does your club actually control?

Players have more ways to discover places to play. Aggregators and AI assistants are becoming part of that process. For operators, the challenge is reaching those players while keeping a direct connection with them.

That is the starting point for CourtReserve’s Intelligent Club™ thesis: discovery, operations, and intelligence should work together to strengthen the club’s relationship with its players.

Own the front door

The Network helps players find your club while preserving the direct relationship.

When evaluating a discovery channel, follow the entire experience. Imagine someone finding an available court on a Sunday afternoon. They book, bring three friends, and enjoy their first visit.

On Monday, can your club help them find their next game? Do they know your name, your programs, and how to return?

Those are useful questions to ask before deciding what that booking was worth. The first transaction gives you an opportunity to earn a regular.

Connect the business behind it

The operating system brings the club’s activities together, replacing disconnected tools with a shared foundation.

Consider a player who books courts regularly but has never joined a clinic. Before sending another general promotion, your team might ask what would make a lesson useful to that person. A conversation at check-in could reveal that they want to improve but feel uncomfortable joining an established group.

That is something your programming team can work with. A welcoming introduction session might serve several players with the same concern.

Connected information becomes valuable when your staff can use it to improve someone’s experience.

Build toward earlier, better decisions

The AI layer is the next step: surfacing opportunities, recommending responses, and increasingly helping carry them out, with the operator directing the decisions.

Imagine a system drawing your attention to a once-active group whose visits have slowed. Your first move might be to call the organizer. Perhaps their usual time no longer works. Perhaps they struggled to find enough players.

An earlier signal creates room for a useful response. Your team still supplies the judgment and care.

Make each visit more valuable

These three parts reinforce one another. Discovery introduces players. Connected operations build understanding. Intelligence helps turn that understanding into action.

For your next planning meeting, trace one player’s journey from discovery through their fifth visit. Look for the point where your club loses touch or leaves the next step unclear.

Then give someone responsibility for improving it.

That is a practical place to begin building an Intelligent Club: a business better equipped to welcome players, understand what keeps them engaged, and earn their next visit.

Explore CourtReserve’s Intelligent Club vision.

Sport AI - A 21st Century Teaching Aid

By Joel Durston

Tech has long been in the game of tennis. Hawk-Eye was first used in a professional tournament over 20 years ago, at the Miami Masters in March 2006. 

Yet, with all the huge developments in tech since, it has not been widely adopted in terms of helping millions of keen amateur tennis players worldwide to develop their games. 

Tennis and racket sports in general have, generally speaking, lagged behind other sports in terms of how embedded technology has been in everyday coaching. 

Professional players have long benefitted from high-speed cameras, in-depth match analytics and biomechanical modelling, but, due to cost and complexity, these have been inaccessible to most of the tennis world.   

Now different companies are stepping up to the (base)line to do just this, using smartphone cameras, computer vision and AI-driven analysis platforms to help over 100 million tennis players around the world (according to the ITF).

As Racket Business states, technology that once required a team of analysts can now be accessed by a coach and player in minutes. 

One company offering this is SportAI, an innovative tech service which instantaneously analyses your game and gives technical and tactical feedback - and it also works for padel and pickleball. 

Players and coaches are loving it. Gary Cimperman, who runs Cimperman Tennis Academy, is a big proponent. 

He says, "I was always so apprehensive about implementing tech into my lessons. I never had the best phone. I never had the best camera or the best software."

"Now, thanks to SportAI, I have an on-ramp to the most sophisticated tennis analytics on the market. Not only can I provide my students more precise information on the court, but I can also differentiate myself from other tennis professionals in my direct area."

"The addition of this 21st-century teaching aid into my lessons only enhances my relationship with parents by deepening trust and transparency." 

As Gary says, fundamental to the technology is that it enhances what coaches do, rather than replacing it. The human touch is essential, and coaches and clubs who can make smart use of AI will be steps ahead of the competition. 

Some of the ways this tech can help coaches is instant data and analysis, remote coaching, improved communication, increased monetization, and personalised training plans.

And for clubs, adopting use of technology like this helps attract and retain members as it differentiates clubs, gives a professional feel, and offers modern, high-value coaching. 

It is also great for encouraging youth today. Children love seeing themselves improve, whatever the activity is. The thing with tennis, though, is that while children improve, so do their teammates and competitors, so it can be harder to see concrete progress (compared to, say, playing the piano). 

Sport AI is able to track and compare development over years - and compare against role models - to not only help with the direct mechanics of coaching children but keep them engaged in the game of tennis, when other sports and other hobbies compete hard for their time. 

Espen Foss is one coach heavily involved in kids’ tennis. He is the founder of the grassroots tennis program Tennis Kids. 

"For me, SportAI is not about replacing the coach. It’s about making coaches better," he says. "The coach provides the understanding, creativity, and individual solutions. Technology should make coaches more curious, not less important!"

The technology has attracted investment from some big names. The best chess player in the world, Magnus Carlsen, and his father Henrik are among the investors in Sport AI.

Carlsen says, “To be great at sports is about finding your edge. The technology that SportAI is bringing to market can expand availability to technical coaching and analysis in a way that’s never been possible before."

"I love sports like golf and tennis, and I believe that AI-powered technique analysis can truly advance these sports for players, businesses, and spectators alike. That is why I decided to invest and get behind the SportAI team.”

And Casper Ruud, another investor, explains, “As someone who has competed at the highest level, I know that winning margins often come down to tiny details. SportAI's technology is bringing elite-level insights - the kind of analysis that top players have access to - to everyone around the world."

"Whether you're at your local club or training for tournaments, players at all levels can now get the data they need to improve their game.”

Sport AI website

CourtsApp Goes National With 67,000+ Places to Play Across the U.S.

With more than 280,000 courts across the U.S., CourtsApp is the largest racquet sports marketplace in America, bringing court discovery, booking, open play, tournaments, and more.

Players can explore CourtsApp, and facility operators can find and claim their facility at CourtsApp.com.

CourtsApp, the AI-powered discovery and booking marketplace for racquet sports, today announced its national expansion, bringing more than 67,000 facilities and 280,000 courts across the United States onto a single platform. The expansion marks a major step toward solving one of racquet sports' most persistent problems: finding a place to play.

As tennis, pickleball, padel and other racquet sports continue to surge in popularity, the places to play them remain highly fragmented. Players often have to search across individual club websites, park directories and search engines just to find a court.

CourtsApp brings that fragmented landscape together. Players can now search for places to play across the country, discover Tournaments and Open Play, book courts instantly at participating facilities, or connect directly to a facility's existing reservation system, all from one platform.

"There are more places to play racquet sports than ever before. Finding one shouldn't be the hard part," said Daren Hornig, founder and CEO of CourtsApp.

Read the entire Press Release

Head relaunches the Prestige line with iPrestige MP 2.0 and MP Limited

Intelligence in sporting goods does not have to mean software. Head is relaunching its Prestige tennis racket 25 years after the i.Prestige, a model whose Intelligence technology was built from fibers, not code.

Head launched two models globally on Oct. 1: the iPrestige MP 2.0, a reissue of the 2001 design, and the Prestige MP Limited, a lighter and more open racquet for the current game. Head ties the relaunch to the French Open title of Gustavo Kuerten and the Wimbledon title of Goran Ivanisevic, both won in 2001 with Intelligence racquets.

Read more.

In this update

Dynamic Priority Event Registration — give certain members first dibs on your events
"Private Silo" app experience — Make iPlayMe2 your club’s “private” app for racquet sports
My Club's Competitions — making standings and match results visible to all members
Multi-Match Scheduling — generate randomized "order of play" schedules in seconds, for open play, round-robins, progressive doubles leagues, singles leagues, doubles leagues, etc.

Coming next — WhatsApp integration, adding TYPTI, and Last-Minute Available Lessons

Read the details

Putterman Athletics offers a full line of gym floor cover solutions designed to help schools, universities, recreation centers, and athletic facilities protect valuable flooring while transforming gymnasiums into flexible, multi-use spaces.  FloorGard™, FloorGard™ Premium, and EnviroGard™ offer different levels of protection, material options, and finishes for events ranging from graduations and assemblies to concerts, banquets, conventions, and community gatherings.

Gym floors can be damaged by heavy foot traffic, shoes, tables, chairs, stages, rolling carts, equipment, spills, and other activities outside normal athletic use.  Putterman’s gym floor cover systems create a protective layer over the playing surface, helping reduce scratches, scuffs, stains, moisture exposure, and everyday wear while allowing facilities to make greater use of their indoor spaces.

Read full press release

A packed court sheet looks like success. But when leagues, open play, coaching, and rentals all chase the same evening hours, a full sheet can hide a club that is quietly losing members, coaches, and revenue. The club owners and facility operators I work with say the same thing: the courts rarely run out. The rules for who gets them do.

Here are the booking rules that hold up best once a club runs more than one sport and more than one kind of program.

A. Set a court-priority order, and publish it. Decide who gets prime time first, write it down, and share it with members. A common order:

1. League play and coaching blocks. These are your committed, recurring programs. Members and coaches plan their weeks around them.

2. Open play. Your community product. Protect a predictable share of it, at the same times every week.

3. Member reservations.

4. Rentals and one-off events. Valuable, but they fill what's left, not the other way round.

Break the order only on purpose: a tournament weekend, a paying corporate event booked well ahead, a clinic that fills a slow slot. When you break it, tell the people who lose time, early.

B. Split courts between sports by block, not by request

Tennis, pickleball and padel players all want the same 6-9 PM window. If courts go to whoever books first, one sport slowly takes over prime time and the others stop renewing. Operators who handle this well allocate blocks: for example, set courts for pickleball on set evenings, padel's courts protected for its leagues, tennis holding its coaching blocks. Review the split each season against demand you can actually see: waitlists, league sign-ups, and how often open-play sessions fill. Change it at season boundaries, not mid-season.

If a court is lined for more than one sport, treat it as one space on one calendar. Two calendars for the same surface is how double bookings happen.

C. Cancellation and no-show rules that protect revenue without angering members

Empty prime-time courts cost more than any other slot. Set three rules and enforce them the same way for everyone:

• Release deadline. Members and rental groups release courts by a fixed cut-off (for example, 24 hours before) so the time can be re-offered.

• No-show consequence. A first no-show gets a reminder. Repeats lose advance-booking privileges for a period, or are charged, per your published policy.

• Re-offer process. Released courts go to a waitlist, not to whoever happens to refresh the app first.

D. Weather and closure rules for outdoor courts

If you have outdoor courts, decide in advance who makes the call, by what time, and how players hear about it. Say what happens to fees and to league standings. A rule written in March saves a dozen arguments in June.

E. Keep coaching inside the system

Coaches who book courts informally ("I'll just grab court 4") are a common source of conflicts. Put every lesson and clinic on the same calendar as everything else, with the same release rules. Coaches get reliable court time; the front desk stops refereeing.

A one-page checklist before you publish next season's court calendar

[ ] Priority order written, approved, and posted where members can see it
[ ] Court split by sport set for the season, with the evidence you used
[ ] League, coaching and open-play blocks placed before any rentals
[ ] One calendar per court; multi-lined courts counted once
[ ] Release deadline, no-show rule and waitlist process published
[ ] Weather and closure rule written (who decides, by when, how players are told)
[ ] Coaches' lessons and clinics on the shared calendar
[ ] Date set for a mid-season and end-of-season review

The point

Full courts are an output. The schedule is the product. Clubs that publish clear booking rules spend less time settling disputes and more time selling the hours they already have.