Earlier this month, Wimbledon announced it will replace 300 line judges with artificial intelligence from 2025.

For the first time in the championship’s 147-year history, human officials will not be responsible for deciding whether the ball is in or out and 18 match courts will be installed with automated electronic line calling (ELC).

The US Open and Australian Open have already scrapped human line judges, leaving the French Open as the last of the four Grand Slam events yet to make the change.

"It's just the next step," said Lauren Pedersen, CEO of SportAI, a sports tech company focused on tennis technique analysis.

"Wimbledon has an incredible brand, incredible tradition, but they're also moving with the times. They're seeing that many of the other tournaments have already gone to electronic line judging, are embracing the power of AI in sports.

"It's really cool to see that Wimbledon can hold on to tradition where it matters but also move with the times."

The potential of AI in the sport continues to grow and it is not just being used to help umpires in tennis. It is increasingly being used to help players too.

Players can now use AI for coaching thanks to technology that tracks and gives feedback on technique around body movement.

Tennis players can upload or stream a video of themselves and the AI analyses the footage, including key actions, player movements and technique. It can then be compared with the best players in the world for feedback on the discipline you are hoping to improve.

"If I am serving, I can compare my body movements to thousands of other players in the world or the very best player that I want to emulate," added Pedersen.

“If I want to be able to serve like Serena Williams, we can compare my technique versus Serena and get feedback on how I can improve, and that's really a breakthrough in this AI technology.”

As a former NCAA tennis player who represented Norway at the ITF Masters World Championships, Pedersen says you could have multiple coaches giving feedback with various analysis but with no data to support it.

However, she insists AI will work alongside - rather than replace - human coaches.

“It’s important that the industry and coaches see that this is not replacing the human element of coaching because coaching brings in so much more than data and technique analysis," she said.

“However, this is an amazing tool for coaches to back up the messages that they're giving to players.

"So we see that the future of coaching is going to be a fantastic combination of using these kind of AI tools along with their personal touch."

And it is not just professional players who can benefit from AI technology.

Retailers who sell sports equipment can use it to help customers pick the right racket with the optimum weight, string tensions and head sizes.

The technology could also soon be applied across a range of other sports.

"We started with racket sports basically because of our history and network within these sports. But we're called Sport AI, and the ambition is to expand the platform to be relevant for and use within many, many sports," Pedersen added.

"In so many sports there are isolated techniques that players train over and over again to perfect. And this is the perfect case for Sport AI.

"So you can think of a free throw in basketball or you can think cricket, baseball, all of these sports have elements that would really benefit to have objective and scalable technique, analysis and data put into the coaches and players and then to equipment, recommendations and so forth.

"So, for us, this is just the very beginning."

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