In a first of its kind in India, the Tamil Nadu Tennis Association (TNTA) has tied up with Tennis Touch, a Croatian firm which develops a mobile application for tennis players and fans that can provide news, scores, draws and other tournament-related information.
The collaboration was born out of a meeting Ivan Ljubicic had with the TNTA vice-president Karti P. Chidambaram at this year’s Wimbledon. The TNTA is now trying out the app on a pilot basis at the ongoing adidas under-18 junior nationals and hopes for its roll out for other TNTA tournaments in due course.
“It will be a good value addition,” said Karti.
“As much as tennis is an individual sport, it’s also a big community. To connect the players, organisers and fans there is nothing better than going the smart phone way.”
When assured of a consistent flow of content, the app can provide live scores, information on the draw, latest news among others. For example, player-profiles can be uploaded which might be helpful for the participants when they look up information on their opponents.
Real-time information Tennis Touch representatives, Vedrana Marceta and Damir Kacer, explained that for players who travel to tournaments week-in and week-out, getting real-time information could be very useful. It could also be integrated to the hand-held scoring devices used by the chair umpires in all ITF Futures tournaments to provide live scoring.
Tennis Touch started the project three years ago with the last two years being spent on its research and development. India is the fifth country it is being tried out after Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Mexico.
While the app is free for the individual associations, end-users (players and fans) will have to pay an annual fee of approximately Rs. 400 once the subscriptions start at the end of the year.