Mumbai: In the 12th game of the second set against Learner Tien on Thursday, Daniil Medvedev scrambled across the baseline to retrieve a forehand. He hung mid-air and racquet-less as the frame froze for a good couple of seconds. That was the animated version of Medvedev. The real one had quickly regained balance.
Confused? For more clarity, head over to the official YouTube channel of the Australian Open.
It features a ‘live’ section for matches on select courts at the ongoing season-opening Grand Slam in Melbourne, except the players are cartooned versions overlaying a real-time broadcast. Most other things pretty much match the actual stuff, including the players’ dress, skin colour, accessories they wear on court, serving and playing style, the live scoring and graphics.
Why, you’d ask, would anyone watch an animation of this beautiful thing called live sport, which you can catch on TV or mobile? Well, if you don’t have paid subscription of the host broadcasters, this is a pretty decent alternative to get a sense of what’s happening on court. And with this, the Australian Open hopes to attract a much younger audience that are hooked on to a completely different world — gaming.
“The wonderful part of it is it’s the players’ actual movement. It’s the actual trajectory of the ball,” Machar Reid, Tennis Australia’s director of innovation, told The Associated Press. “We’re taking the real into the unreal.”
Not all of it blends in perfectly, of course. The tennis balls are much larger in the animated version. The racquets are oddly oversized and, at times, tend to move away from the players’ hands. The pace of the rallies and ball striking is a lot slower. And, without sounding overtly critical or judgmental, some features of some players simply do not match.
Like one viewer observed — quite astutely, may we add — during the Medvedev-Tien match: “Medvedev finally has a beard here”.
Medvedev, incidentally, is a big reason behind this innovation going viral on social media (as the Russian often is with most things). His racquet-smashing meltdown at the net during his five-set first-round win looked more dramatic and hilarious in the animated version, which then caught the attention of millions of people worldwide.
It wasn’t the case last year. Tennis Australia had this feature even in the 2024 edition, but only for matches on one court and with a lot fewer eyeballs. This time, the first four days of the tournament have attracted almost a million views on the animated stream, according to Tennis Australia. Well done, Daniil.
Sports and leagues like the National Football League (NFL) in the US have previously experimented with animated streaming, but this is a first in tennis. And the players don’t seem to mind this parallel cartoon network. 2021 US Open finalist Leylah Fernandez accidentally stumbled upon the animated thing while trying to hunt for a match on YouTube.
“So I click on it and think, ‘This is it. Finally! I have one’,” the Canadian said. “Nope. It’s a Wii (cartoon) character. Which is hilarious.”
The 22-year-old said she hasn’t seen the cartoon version of herself yet, but maybe she will. “Now I’m curious.”
