Big Serves. Big Data.

European tennis season is well and truly upon us. As we march through the beautiful clay courts of Spain and Italy and watch Rafa, the master craftsman, try and keep himself right up there as the man to beat, all eyes will soon be moving onto Paris and the luxurious French Open and finally, in all its glory, the tour will move on to the sanctity of the All England Club and our quasi-religious two weeks on the finest grass in the world.

With or without Cliff, this is the greatest championship and most coveted prize in tennis, on a surface that is no longer favoured in most countries. It is an anachronistic throwback to the days when Fred Perry, Suzanne Lenglen, and the legendary French musketeers sliced through the Summer sun with their wooden racquets and white trousers, to the advent of the professional era, with Rocket Rod Laver, Billy Jean King and the moustachioed John Newcombe taking the grass game to new heights, soon to be followed by Ashe, Borg, McEnroe, Becker, Edberg, Cash and all those amazing names from the 70s and 80s that I grew up with, oozing charisma and taming the grass of SW19.

As we moved past Pistol Pete and further into the 2000s, The Fed Express became the man to beat. A ballet dancer on the lawns, a precision machine with elegant, flowing strokes, probably the GOAT, but definitely the master of Wimbledon. Untouchable, unshakable and annoyingly nice to boot. Who was going to beat him, and how? Up steps Rafa, our erstwhile King of Clay. You cannot be serious, people said. Win Wimbledon? On Grass? I think not.

Growing up in the dry, clay-coloured heat of the junior tennis factory in Spain, he came through the ranks with supreme fitness, a heavy top spin and the ability to craft points like a chess grandmaster, all angles and service returns and RPM, matched with artistry, touch and guile. 50+ shot rallies and 5hr matches in searing heat, lines being cleaned and courts being watered all the while, able to eek every advantage out of the slow red dirt to conquer his opponents. Nothing whatsoever to do with winning on grass. Same sport, but conceptually different in vision, approach, tactics and strategy.

The grass courts, as Mr Federer so ably demonstrates, favours rapier-sharp shots and a different kind of movement, a glide not a slide, closing out rallies with power and precision on the much faster surface, the server being in the driving seat at all times, closing out points in one, maybe three shots, and a slightly inconvenient 5 shots or more every now and then. Grass court prowess is a unique sporting thing to watch as a spectator, even as a connoisseur of tennis; there is a certain majesty to it that you simply don't observe on the other surfaces. It is unique, powerful and thrilling, and sometimes impossible to comprehend how players can have that precision and control whilst combatting, and harnessing, the speed and power of a grass court.

The only way to conquer Wimbledon if you happened to be called Mr Nadal was to 'figure it out'. Both grass and Rog. In 2006 he came close, losing out to Roger in the final. Rafa blew the first set 6-0 and then succumbed in 4. In 2007, he tried again, this time losing the final in 5 sets, an epic taster of what was to come. He was getting closer. In 2008, he finally did it, winning 9-7 in the 5th set, in arguably the greatest Wimbledon final ever (sorry BB and Johnny Mac). He had done it. The clay court master had beaten the Champ who was as much from SW19 as he was from Switzerland. He had been outplayed (just) in his own back garden, on his own court, in his kingdom. This was truly Shakespearian in its drama. The King had been slain. Long live the Rey.

The fact staring everyone in the face was how Rafa had not only taught himself how to play on clay, but also how to beat Roger on his favourite surface. This is not only the mark of a true student of the game, but of someone who is willing to use every possible means available to them to get the result required. Rafa and his team had studied the Data. It is as simple as that. And he won again in 2010, proving he had done his maths.

Almost more so than any other sport right now, Big Data is changing the face of tennis. Pretty quietly, it has to be said, but nonetheless it is becoming vital to the sport and the industry that surrounds it.

Of course the use of heavy data has been around quite a while for tennis racquets, determining the multitude of different weights, string tensions, flex and balance that are available to every player on the planet now (choosing a racquet even as a club player is a science in itself). But using data to model court surfaces, opponents' abilities, diets and weather conditions? This is the stuff of real science, that players like Rafa are using to gain an advantage, and what is keeping Rafa, Roger and Novak at the top of the game despite their advancing years. It is their infinite willingness to learn, study, adapt and change, to players, surfaces, age and capability. The youngsters will have to step up in the same way at some point to get a break (point) in their careers, or just wait for the Big 3 to retire.

Advances in real-time analytics technology such as IBM's Watson and SAP (who have a product called 'Tennis Analytics', believe it or not), can monitor and model players' performance before, during and after a tournament, highlighting historic strengths and defining areas of potential weakness. Looking at stats like serve consistency, service spin, serve placement, percentage of returned serves to which wing, the number of times a player serve-volleys on first and second serve in the second set of a match.....there are infinite data points just on serve to analyze and take on board. Then there is the concept of Elo points, which show the strength of a player at any given point during a game, set, match, tournament or season (more accurate than world rankings), allowing percentage win/loss chances to be calculated based on surface, opponent, time of year, any given metric that can be applied.

If you then couple this with ball speed, top spin RPM, slice percentage, drop shot completions, returns in/out/direction, atmospheric conditions and ball-toss adjustment, then you have an end-to-end, data-driven view of how to beat an opponent even before you arrive on court and adjust your chair, umbrella and order your orange squash from the ballboy. You have a digital twin of your tennis future, predictive analytics showing you the best way to play to achieve success at any given time against any given opponent. The more data you have from different sources, the more you can model, the more chance of success you have. Complicated yet simple. Obvious to all I would imagine, but still underutilized.

For, the sake of time, I am not going to go into heart monitors, blood glucose, diets, muscle mass and other biometric data. This is de rigeur for all us now, not just tennis players, and should be a given.

Add all this together, and this is how Rafa beat Roger in that epic final 13 years ago. He studied the data. To death. And this has parallels to every other aspect of our lives right now, especially as we move out of lockdown and the new normal suggests that the buying habits and movements of people is now changed substantially, forever.

Removing the Fila, showering and putting the work garb back on, Vodafone is leading the industry in helping the FMCG sector reshape and plan for the years to come. Using our class-leading, unique mobile Big Data analytics platform, we are allowing clients understand the demographic and migratory data of their potential customers (anonymized and GDPR compliant of course), allowing them to better plan their spend and outcomes in sales, marketing, brand and product teams, also enabling better fluidity of their supply chain and being able to serve and sell much better, more often and with a predictable repeatablity. Right place, right time products, driven by Big Data analysis and modelling.

Our customers are equally asking for in-building analytics - shops, pubs, offices, how am I managing my customers' experience - and, working with GlobalReach Technology's class-leading SaaS solutions, Vodafone is able to provide clients with dynamic captive portals, demographic data, heat maps and analytics, better-enabling our clients to serve and sell to their customers through well-planned user experiences, often in real-time. We are also bolstering this capability with our Vodafone Visual Data platforms, comprised of cameras, IoT and analytics, garnering data through a real-time bird's eye view of how your customers are experiencing your brands. And do we do this alone? No, we are partnering with Google, Amazon, Facebook and other services to provide holistic, end-to-end consumer journey data that is invaluable to our FMCG customers.

Predictive, deep, meaningful, rich analytics, coupled with class-leading connectivity where required, is as attractive a proposition to our clients as drinking Pimms whilst wearing a white Lacoste on a balmy July day in South West London. And, thanks to Mr Nadal, we can surely see that the more data you have, and the more that you analyze, scrutinize, model and adapt based on the output of this data, the more chance you have of success - even in these strange, unpredictable times. Right now, it's all a bit like playing on grass having grown up on clay, you could say.

Are you serious? If so, speak to Vodafone to see how we can help you be a Champion, with our data and analytics SaaS solutions.

https://www.vodafone.com/business/cloud-and-hosting/digital-services/vodafone-analytics