Tennis coach plays his way into computer game

A tennis coach working for Community Leisure Services was recently chosen to be the ‘male body’ for the launch of the 2008 Top Spin Tennis computer game that is being developed by Sony and Microsoft.

Tom Greenland of the White Horse Leisure & Tennis Centre, Abingdon spent five days being filmed by Audiomotion Studios in Oxford to build the images for different tennis strokes, moves and in-between point actions such as running forehand top spin.

Audiomotion approached tennis clubs in Oxford and London and asked for people to be put forward.

“Some of the filming was quite intense as I had to do a specific move over and over until they were happy with it,” said Greenland.

“It was very tiring and repetitive. The suit I had to wear had reflector balls all over it which were connected to a computer. The computer model is put on the frame and adjusted to the characteristics of the player.”