At The USTA Training Center (Page 1)

One of the project's main goals was to study and quantify the differences in the way tennis balls bounce on different court surfaces. As a partner in our research, USTA Sports Science, and director of research Dr. Paul Roetert, made that possible at the USTA Player Development Center in Key Biscayne.

Everyone from USTA Player Development and Sports Science was very supportive of our team and helpful to us at every step. In addition to Paul, special recognition goes to his assistant Laura Selby, and to Sports Exercise Specialist Barrett Bugg, who cheerfully arrived to let us into the facility in the very early morning, even on the weekends!

The USTA facility is one of the few places in the world with all four major court surfaces: hard courts, red and green clay, and grass. As the experimental scripts show, we decided to measure the following aspects of the interaction between the ball and the court:

1. The velocity of the ball before and after the bounce
2. The angle of the ball flight (or trajectory)
3. The amount of spin and the change in spin before and after the bounce.
4. The change in spin over the course of the flight of the ball.