How AI is reshaping the U.S. Open for players and fans
At the U.S. Open, artificial intelligence is giving players and fans a new way to experience the tournament.
September 4, 2026 / 5:40 PM EDT / CBS News
Seeing fans with their phones out during a tennis match would've been a strange sight even a decade ago. But at the U.S. Open this year, the digital world has become intertwined with the game as live AI insights reshape the tournament experience.
On Tuesday night, when Coco Gauff faced off against Zeynep Sönmez of Turkey, AI-generated analysis trickled in through the U.S. Open app, tracking key moments, each player's likelihood to win and a new metric called "serve quality."
Cameras lining the perimeter of Arthur Ashe Stadium track the ball, racket and players' limbs, collecting data points like elbow and knee flexion and wrist flex velocity. Then, IBM's agentic software development platform, Watsonx, processes the data from the court to measure the efficiency, accuracy and consistency of a player's serve, a number out of 100 that can be seen in the U.S. Open app postmatch.
Gauff's winning serves had a "controlled racket preparation and deep knee bend during her setup," according to the serve quality summary.
There will be over a billion data points produced by the end of the tournament, said Tyler Sidell, IBM's technical program director for sports and entertainment partnerships.