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Data Collection Progress Report Submitted January 13, 1998 by John Yandell

Maybe you've seen these courts on television. Wimbledon, the most famous tournament in tennis (in England) is played on grass. The French Open is played on red clay. In America we have a lot of green clay in the east and south, but they are rare in the rest of the country, especially California. The U.S. Open is played on hard courts.

Players know that the ball bounces differently on all surfaces. Grass is slick and fast. Clay causes the ball to slow down and bounce high. Hard courts (usually asphalt covered with colored acrylic mixed with sand) is somewhere in between.

Players and coaches know this, but amazingly, the differences haven't been studied in a systematic, scientific way. That's why we're going to Florida!

We'll be using the same state of the art digital camera we used at the Open--it shoots up to 500 frames a second, compared to 30 frames for regular television cameras. We'll point the camera at the bounce on the court.

We've worked with the sports scientists at the USTA to develop experimental scripts. These describe how we hope to measure things such as the angle of the ball as it hits and leaves the court, the change in speed and the change in spin.