Actually, kids who’ve grown up with technology will demand that. That data will be there as evidence to help a coach show and convince a player to do this or change this. It’s another set of eyes.” He went on, “Technology can gather data a coach can’t. “But technology-the right technology-can see things a coach can’t. “Individual coaching will always be key,” Uehling said. At every level of the game, from young kids whacking green-dot, low-compression balls to world-class athletes training to reach the pro tour, development was all about the coach. He also recognized, as others are only now beginning to, that the sport was a tech-and-data laggard: its science-based breakthroughs were limited mostly to racquet and string materials unlike baseball, it had no Bill James calculating analytics. He saw that, at the élite level, everyone had good technique and nearly everyone hit hard, but that some players-the best players- performed better: they held up and even thrived, physically and mentally, under the strains of a game that was growing increasingly athletic and, with longer rallies and points, stressful. What he mostly took from his playing days, he says, is a deep inquisitiveness about how a player develops. Uehling is a mild-mannered, boyishly enthusiastic forty-two-year-old who tried to break into pro tennis after college, reaching the ranking of No. It hangs on the wall of one of two tennis clubs in suburban towns near Alpine where Uehling has expanded his academy, called CourtSense, and introduced his ideas about tennis and fitness. To Djokovic, Uehling is “Super G,” as he wrote on an autographed photo he gave Uehling. It was Uehling who introduced Djokovic to the CVAC hyperbaric chamber, an egg-shaped, World’s Fair-evoking pod in which you relax while simulated altitude pressure and a cyclical program of muscle compression work together to enhance your body’s ability to absorb oxygen. Uehling is a longtime friend and now an informal member of Djokovic’s backroom team. As he has done for several years, Novak Djokovic, the world’s top tennis player, has set up camp on the estate as he prepares for the U.S. Uehling III, who has transformed a hillside stretch of the property into a tennis-training facility that employs digital technology to gather data on every aspect of a player’s body, mind, and game, utilizing high-tech tools to improve that player’s performance. Zoellner, who died last year, had a clubman’s interest in tennis. The property-imposing homes, numerous outbuildings, a manmade lake, gardens and vistas-was assembled by Robert Zoellner and his wife, Victoria, who together founded Alpine Associates Advisors, a firm specializing in merger arbitrage. The road to the near future of tennis winds through the exclusive northern New Jersey borough of Alpine, to an unmarked drive where, behind formidable bi-parting gates, there lies a forty-million-dollar, forty-eight-acre wooded estate.
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