The Tennis Coaching Report That Survives the Drive Home

In plain English: the AceSense report is a PDF that turns your tennis video into a readable coaching document. Summary page, heatmap, stroke quality, per-shot table, work-on-this. It's the artefact that makes the rest of AceSense useful — without it, the analysis lives only in the app. With it, you can email it to your coach, save it in a folder, look at it again three months from now, and compare.

This page is what's in the report and why the format matters more than the features.

What it does, in one paragraph

After shot detection, ball tracking, the court heatmap, and stroke quality all run, the pipeline assembles their outputs into a single PDF. The structure is fixed — summary first, then heatmap, then stroke-quality, then per-shot detail — because consistency across reports lets you compare week-over-week without hunting for sections. The PDF is paired with a linked, timestamped video that lets you click into any specific shot from the report. The full backend pipeline is documented at /how-it-works; this page is the report-output layer.

How accurate it is

Accuracy of the report itself is the composite of every layer feeding it. The summary numbers are as reliable as their underlying features:

• Shot counts: as reliable as shot detection — F1 in the high-80s to low-90s depending on shot type.
• Heatmap zones: as reliable as the court heatmap — within 30–50 cm bounce-position accuracy.
• Speed numbers: as reliable as ball tracking — 5–10% error band on serves and groundstrokes.
• Stroke quality scores: as reliable as pose-based scoring — per-shot noisy, per-match-average stable.

The full methodology for every layer is published at /accuracy. The report doesn't manufacture accuracy; it presents what the pipeline produced. Where a number is low-confidence, the report flags it.

Where it fails

Three failure modes specific to the report layer:

1. The "work on this" section is generic

The coaching translation at the end of the report is rule-based. It looks at your per-component scores, finds the lowest one, and outputs a generic recommendation ("forehand follow-through is short — try the over-the-shoulder finish drill"). It's not a bespoke coach; it's a guide-rail. For specific, high-trust coaching feedback, send the report to a human coach (see /use-cases/coaches-async-review). The report is the substrate for coaching, not the coaching itself.

2. Per-shot table can be overwhelming

A 60-minute match produces 200+ shots. The per-shot table lists them all. Most amateur players don't need this level of detail — the summary page is the read-it-first artefact. We're working on a "smart highlights" view that surfaces only the 10–15 most informative shots. Today, the per-shot table is comprehensive but dense.

3. Cross-match comparison is manual

We don't yet auto-compare this week's report against last week's. You can do it visually by opening both PDFs, but a longitudinal "your forehand-depth trend over 8 weeks" view is on the 2026 roadmap. Today, the artefact is per-match.

Why this is the right framing for an amateur player

Here's the structural argument, which is more important than the feature list: the report exists because the analysis has to leave the app to be useful.

Almost every tennis-AI app today keeps the analysis trapped in their interface. You open the app, you scroll through stats, you can't easily share it, you can't reference it offline, you can't send it to a coach. The "report" is a screen, not a document.

That's a structural mistake for amateur players for three reasons:

1. Coaches don't have your app. You can't expect your coach (in-person or remote) to install the same tool you use, learn its UI, and look at your data through your interface. They want a PDF in their inbox they can mark up. The parents-junior-tennis use case is built entirely around this — the parent sends the report to the coach, who reads it in 30 seconds.
2. Memory is short. What you saw in the app last Tuesday is gone by next Sunday's match. A PDF saved in a folder is the only thing that survives the week. Three months in, the folder of PDFs is a longitudinal record nothing else gives you.
3. You don't trust the app's interpretation, you want the data. The summary page is a presentation, not a database. The PDF lets you scroll past the parts the app emphasised and find the bits that matter to you.

This is also why the async-coach use case is built around the PDF specifically. The report is the coach's pre-process. Without it, the coach scrubs video for 30 minutes per student. With it, the coach reads the summary in 2 minutes and goes straight to the time-coded shots that need attention.

Walkthrough: one report, end-to-end

You play a singles match Sunday morning. You upload at 11:42. The report arrives at 11:48. Here's what you do with it:

Page 1: Summary

You read this in 60 seconds. It tells you:

• 124 shots total. 73 forehands, 38 backhands, 13 serves (you served 4 games).
• Headline pattern: "Backhand placement clusters short and middle — depth dropped 18% versus last week's report."
• Work on this: "Backhand preparation flagged in 41% of shots. Try shoulder-rotation drill: rally cross-court backhands, focus on shoulder loaded before the ball bounces on your side."

Page 2: Heatmap

You filter to backhands. The cluster confirms the summary — three quarters of your backhands landed in the middle third, not the back third. You filter to forehands. Cleaner pattern, deeper, cross-court-favoured. You filter to serves, then 1st serves only — wide on the deuce side is your money serve. 2nd serves are short and middle, which is the leak.

Page 3: Stroke quality

Backhand preparation: 62. Backhand contact: 71. Backhand follow-through: 79. The leak is in preparation. (Matches the summary — these pages don't contradict each other.) Forehand: all components in the 72–80 band. Serve: 1st serves are 75 average, 2nd serves drop to 64 — same gap the heatmap showed.

Page 4: Per-shot table

You skim it. You spot two backhands marked low-confidence (stroke-quality score under 50). You click into the linked video at those timestamps. You watch them. You can see the early shoulder opening — same thing the model flagged.

Page 5: Save and share

You save the PDF to your Drive folder ("AceSense reports"). You email it to your coach with one sentence: "backhand prep — same issue as last month, hasn't stuck. Can we drill it Tuesday?"

Total time: 8 minutes from upload to coach. Total time on actual review: 6 minutes. That's the loop.

What it doesn't do

Be clear:

• Not a coach. The work-on-this items are generic. The PDF is a substrate; pair it with a coach for the trust layer.
• Not a stats database. The per-shot table is in PDF, not CSV. Power users wanting raw data export should email us — we'll find a way today, native CSV export is on the roadmap.
• Not personalised to your goals. The report is calibrated to a generic NTRP 3.0–4.5 player. If you have specific weight-on-court issues, an extreme grip, or a recovering injury, the report doesn't know — it shows you what the data shows. You bring the context.

Pricing

The PDF report is included on every tier — there's no "premium report." Free tier limits matches per month (2/month), paid tiers unlock unlimited and longitudinal comparison features. Full pricing at /pricing.

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Ready to get your own report? Upload a match free and you'll have the PDF in your hands in under 10 minutes. Or read the methodology page first to know what the numbers mean before you trust them. The report is the synthesis of shot detection, ball tracking, the court heatmap, and stroke quality — all of them feed the same PDF.

Frequently asked questions

What's actually in the report?

Summary page (shot counts, headline patterns, the one-thing-to-work-on); court heatmap (filterable by shot type); stroke-quality breakdown (per-component scores for forehand, backhand, serve, volley); per-shot table with timestamps; bounce-zone analysis; and a short coaching-translation section. Plus the linked timestamped video for clicking into specific moments.

Can I share it with my coach?

Yes. Tap share in the AceSense app, send via email or AirDrop or a link. Your coach doesn't need an AceSense account to read the PDF. There's a one-page coach intro at /how-to/share-report-with-coach if your coach hasn't seen one before.

Does the PDF expire?

No. Once generated, it's yours forever. The linked timestamped video is hosted on our infrastructure (GDPR-compliant EU storage) for 12 months on free tier and indefinitely on paid tiers. The PDF itself is a normal file — save it anywhere.

Can I download just the data, not the PDF?

CSV export of the per-shot table is on the 2026 roadmap. Today, the PDF is the primary artefact. If you have a specific data-export need (e.g. for a spreadsheet you maintain), email [email protected] and we'll find a workaround.

How long does report generation take?

Typically 3–7 minutes for a 60-minute singles match, depending on video length and current GPU queue. You'll get a notification when it's ready. The pipeline runs on serverless GPU; we don't keep your video on a queue for hours.