This racket certainly isn’t the $20 aluminum one you used to beat around a tennis ball on the community courts when you were young.

The Babolat Play Pure Drive is the next step (or perhaps level) in tennis technology bringing the power of big data and sport analytics (quite literally) to the palm of your hand. As discussed in this Bloomberg Businessweek article, this racket, “records the strength of the impact and the spin (of the ball). An accompanying smartphone app processed the data and also calculated the number of forehands, backhands, serves, and overhead smashes.”

If this racket works as Babolat, one of the world’s top racket makers, believe it will it could be the first step in what will undoubtedly be a huge step forward in not just tennis development — but sport development as a whole. Imagine a world where technology like this and the data produced is matched up with video analysis technology where one could correlate a certain point in a game with data backing up a flawed technique or skill? The impacts it could have for athletic development and performance are bottomless.

For example, a player continually hits the ball long when going down the line on their forehand. Using the Babolat technology the player and coach could see that it’s because the player is not getting enough topspin on the ball or hitting it with the wrong part of the racket. Nearly instantaneously, the coach and player could then reference the video to analyze the technique or stroke at that point and then make corrective measures. Perhaps the player isn’t getting over on the ball enough or the shoulders aren’t getting squared because of the footwork; these are all insights that could be gained immediately from marrying the data produced by this technology and then combining it with a video analysis application.

At the highest levels of sport you can be quite certain they are already using similar processes but what this technology will do is put it all into one tight package and make it available and affordable to all.

So imagine you had this technology in whatever your sport of choice is. Put it into a skate so you can get insights into how much weight you are putting on your edge, or into a soccer cleat so your kid’s coach can see where they are striking the ball? How about a baseball that records grip and then where it ends up (hopefully) in the catcher’s mitt?

The applications really are endless and are certainly exciting. The future is here.