An Electronic Brain for Tennis Matches

N E W  Y O R K, Sept. 7 -- Just as there are tennis wizards on the courts here, there are electronic wizards working behind the scenes at the U.S. Open: The world's largest tennis tournament, it seems, has its own electronic brain.

Every morning, dozens of uniformed umpires crowd into a space beneath Louis Armstrong Stadium. There, from a teller's window near the chief umpire's office, they receive small black hand-held computers. Within minutes, they are carrying the devices, no bigger than a book, onto their assigned courts and climbing into their chairs overlooking the action.

The umpires then use their computers to keep score of each match, their signals going deep into the basement of the giant Arthur Ashe Stadium. The information flows into a room called the Bat Cave. It's crammed with computers and monitors, and a dozen workers in shorts and tennis shirts.

Inside the cave, James Broder, a tennis player who developed the software, monitors the action. "We can track every point of every match," says Broder. "The umpires, they're providing content."

More Than Tennis Scores

It was Broder who created a way to use that content to feed an astonishing number of appetites. The signals flash across 68 scoreboards at once and onto two gigantic Jumbotrons, which carry video from dozens of cameras around the grounds, which was once the site of the 1939 World's Fair.

Working with statisticians who attend the big matches and record statistics, Broder and his associates create an electronic barrage of real-time scores and statistics, which can be flashed directly onto television screens around the world.

It's a prodigious feat, so specialized and sophisticated that it has propelled Broder into an entrepreneurship that now spans an international sports world far beyond Grand Slam tennis.

Broder's scoring and timing universe now covers the Winter Goodwill Games (ski racing, bobsled, luge), the bicycling Tour de France, the World Equestrian Championships, World Cup velo (track cycling), World Junior Velo Championships, Tag Heuer World Cup ski racing, and the NASCAR race car circuit. Until a few years ago, Broder's world even included the gritty task of keeping score for Pro Beach Volleyball (no longer a client).