I’ve had two students bring some pretty interesting toys to lessons recently.
One showed up with an Acemate.
Another brought a Tennibot Partner.
I don’t own either one. Neither company sent me anything, and this wasn’t supposed to be a review. They literally showed up at lessons because my students owned them, and naturally I wanted to play with them.
So I did.
And they were very different experiences.
First Up Was the Acemate
I was probably more excited to try the Acemate.
The idea is fantastic.
Instead of having a traditional ball machine sitting behind the baseline feeding balls at you, the Acemate is trying to give you something closer to an opponent. You hit to it, it tracks the ball, and the idea is that you can get something resembling a rally going.
That’s cool.
At least, it’s cool when the ball comes back.
That was our problem.
We had a surprisingly difficult time getting consistent returns back into the court.
I’d hit a perfectly reasonable ball toward it and wait to see what happened. Sometimes we’d get a playable ball back. Other times, not so much.
Then you start again.
And again.
After a while, you stop thinking about your tennis and start thinking about whether the machine is going to cooperate.
For me, that defeats the purpose.
I Still Really Like the Idea
I like what the Acemate is trying to do and I hope they keep working on it.
A machine that can sit across the net and legitimately rally with you would be incredibly useful. Not just for players practicing alone, but potentially for coaching too.
I just didn’t get that experience from the machine we used.
Maybe there are conditions where it performs better. Maybe it’ll improve over time. I’m certainly not claiming I’ve conducted some exhaustive test after using one student’s machine during a lesson.
I’m just telling you what happened on our court.
And on our court, we spent too much time trying to get the thing to return the ball.
Then I Tried the Tennibot Partner
A different student later brought a Tennibot Partner.
I’d heard about it, but this was my first opportunity to actually mess around with one during a lesson.
The Partner takes a different approach.
Rather than trying to rally with you from the opposite side of the net, it’s essentially built around feeding and training. Tennibot says you can program drills through the app, customize shots and use different training modes.
That probably sounds less futuristic than a robot trying to rally with you.
But as a coach, I found it more immediately useful.
We could set something up, start hitting, and I could think about what the player was doing instead of what the machine was doing.
That’s really what I want.
The Part That Interested Me as a Coach
Ball feeding is obviously part of coaching.
I’ve probably fed enough tennis balls in my life to fill a small swimming pool.
But there’s a limitation when you’re the one feeding.
You’re watching the player while simultaneously controlling the next ball.
Sometimes I’d rather stand somewhere else.
I might want to watch their footwork from behind. I might want to get a different angle on their contact point. I might just want to focus completely on the player for a few repetitions.
That’s where I started seeing a use for the Partner.
Tennibot says the machine can run programmable drills and can also be used for training multiple players.
I didn’t explore every feature during a student’s lesson, nor am I going to pretend I did.
What I liked was much simpler.
I could have the machine feed and I could coach.
That’s useful.
But $2,245 Is $2,245
Here’s where I struggle with the Partner.
It costs $2,245.
That’s a lot of money.
There’s no clever coaching analysis required here.
I liked using it. Then I looked at the price and thought, “Yeah, I wish that were cheaper.”
For a tennis academy, club, or coach who would use it constantly, maybe the calculation makes sense.
For somebody playing recreational tennis a couple of times a week?
That’s a pretty serious purchase.
They’re Actually Trying to Solve Different Problems
After using both, I don’t think this is quite the head-to-head comparison I initially thought it was.
The Acemate is chasing the more ambitious idea.
It’s trying to create interaction.
You hit. It responds. You hit again.
If that experience becomes really consistent, I think it could be extremely interesting.
The Partner felt more conventional in what it was trying to accomplish, but also more useful to me in a lesson.
Set up a drill.
Feed the player.
Let me watch.
Those are different goals.
And depending on what you want from a machine, you might care about one much more than the other.
Would I Buy One?
I don’t know.
And I think that’s a much more useful answer than pretending I walked off court ready to pull out my credit card.
The Acemate would need to become considerably more consistent based on the experience I had with it.
The Partner worked in a way that made more sense for how I coach, but $2,245 is enough money that I’d have to think seriously about how often I’d actually use it.
I’d also want more time with both before making any kind of long-term judgment.
I’ve played with each because students brought them to lessons.
That’s it.
No sponsorship.
No six-month test.
No spreadsheet.
Just a tennis coach who saw two robots show up at his court and obviously couldn’t resist playing with them.
Where I Think This Gets Interesting
The thing I took away from both experiences is that ball machines are finally becoming a little more interesting.
The traditional ball machine has been doing basically the same job forever:
Here’s a ball.
Here’s another ball.
Here’s another ball.
Now companies are asking whether the machine can move, adapt, create drills, respond to players, or become something closer to an actual training partner.
Some of those ideas are going to work.
Some are going to be terrible.
Some will probably be brilliant eventually but frustrating right now.
That’s how new technology goes.
Personally, I’m happy companies are experimenting with it.
The Acemate made me think about how cool it would be to have a machine that could genuinely rally with you.
The Partner made me think about where I could stand while somebody else fed the balls for once.
As a tennis coach, I can appreciate both ideas.
Although my shoulder probably has a favorite.