Whoop, There It Goes: The Latest Australian Open Scandal Comes In Underwear

In this week's episode of sports world drama that shouldn't even be that big, all eyes go south to Australia. Turns out, the Australian Open has brewed up a fresh round of controversy over… nope, not doping, not cheating, but fitness trackers.

Men’s World No. 1 tennis player Carlos Alcaraz was warming up for his fourth round against Tommy Paul at the Australian Open, when chair umpire Marija Cicak noticed a Whoop band on his right wrist. 

Alcaraz was promptly asked to remove the device.

This isn't the first time players were asked to remove their fitness tracking device at the Australian Open. Alcaraz’s rival, World No. 2 Jannik Sinner, and Women’s World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka were also asked to take down their trackers, continuing a rather weird run-in between Tennis regulatory bodies and wearable devices. 

For the unversed, Whoop bands are special fitness trackers preferred by elite athletes for tracking their vitals. They aren't like your typical smartwatches, in that they not only lack screens, but also track your biometrics down to your performance and stress levels. This data can then be accessed on your phone via Bluetooth. 

It’s not difficult to see when players would prefer to wear these during tournaments. With the extensive data that these trackers generate, players and coaches can even predict when the athlete is more likely to injure or tire themselves out, and train appropriately. “There is certain data that we would like to track a little bit on court,” Sinner said after his match with Luciano Darderi, recounting his instruction to remove his Whoop. “It’s more about [what] you can see after the match. These are datas what we would like to use also in practice sessions, because from that you can practice on with the heart rate, how much calories you burn, all these kind of things.”

Then why are players being asked to remove these trackers?

Despite the widespread popularity of Whoop bands among sportsmen, their use during matches are not allowed in many sports around the world. In tennis, the rules are a little haphazard. The International Tennis Federation, the primary governing body in the Tennis world, allows wearable trackers, but Grand Slams have stricter standards, governed by local bodies (Tennis Australia in this example). Although the ITF allows Whoops, Tennis Australia is only considering changing their rules, although no collective decision has been made yet. 

You see, concerns around these trackers are plenty. For one, fitness trackers (including the Whoop band) come with haptic feedback, which, if used smartly, could be used by coaches to communicate with the players mid-match. The ITF allows fitness trackers on the condition that their haptics are disabled, but there’s only so little to ensure that they stay so during matches. 

Additionally, as with any tracking technology, there is the question of how the data would be used and who could use it. Real time physiological data could technically be exploited not only by coaching teams but also by betting markets and data brokers. Besides, most tournaments have their own data partners, which give players access to match insights, although they are nowhere as detailed as the ones by fitness trackers.

Now, this could have been a run-of-the-mill tangle between the wearables industry and regulatory bodies, except, Whoop CEO Will Ahmed took it a step further, and decided to sneak past the safeguards by shipping undergarments - compression tops, bras, shorts, and underwear with integrated pockets - with inbuilt sensors to relocate the tracker away from the wrist. Talk about pettiness. 

That was yesterday. Now, if the players choose to wear them, only a strip search would be able to expose the trackers. Most likely though, the controversy earned Whoop a good marketing opportunity, and while the internet keeps feeding on the drama, the entire “scandal” would just turn out to be yet another example of a billion-dollar company arm-wrestling a regulatory body into following its terms.

Except this time, of course, Whoop is “here to protect the players’ interests”.