With years spent in development, SAM is the cutting edge in computerised ball propulsion technology. This Robot has all the unique features and capabilities the best minds in tennis and science could conceive.

Watch a video of the SAM Robot in action (33.2mb)
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Watch Maria Sharapova Vs SAM (2.6mb)
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Our Testing:

We had the luxury of testing this machine, and we were amazed at what it could do. The spin it could produce was far more than we'd ever experienced in real match play. This is what we were hoping to see from such a promising machine as it ensures that no player could ever outgrow it.

Our play tester is an advanced player currently playing grade 1 pennant in Melbourne, so we started the testing on medium level thinking it would be too easy. We were wrong. It gave our play tester a great work out moving him from side to side and dropping in short balls and lobs just to mix it up.

For a bit of fun, we turned it up to the highest level, and our play tester could only return about 10% of the balls propelled. The angles, spin and intervals made it very difficult to practice at this level and it wasn't long until he was gasping for air.

To give him a break we thought we'd set it for some serving practice. The robot extended it's head right to the top of its reach and started serving down kick, flat and slice serves. There were a few faults here and there, including the occasional one into the net, but overall it produced some realistic serving.

Again we turned it up to it's highest level to see how challenging it would be and our poor play tester never stood a chance. The serves were extremely difficult to play with large amounts of spin and great angles. Our only criticism was that at some points the balls moved so much through the air that we questioned if a real human could actually produce serves like that. Nevertheless it was fun learning how to play them.

We turned it back to medium and set it to simulate match play. We were amazed by this feature as we have never seen it before in any ball machine. The SAM Robot extended itself as high as possible and boomed down a serve before returning to groundstroke height and feeding a couple of challenging shots. It then extended to full height again and served to the other side. We had enough time to change between the forehand and backhand side and play a couple of shots in between each point. It was just like playing a real game. If only we could teach it to return serves!

This is an amazing machine and seriously well built. Everything has been considered. One major flaw was that to program the machine you need to plug in a laptop, but this is hardly an issue seeing as so many different drills have already been pre-programmed.

If you think you've got what it takes to make it as a tennis player, or if you just want the best machine money can buy, then the SAM Robot is definitely for you!

For more information, click on the following:

Detailed specifications (comparison between all SAM models)

SAM Tennis Ball Machine Brochure

SAM Tennis Ball Machine Training Drills Manual

Read our Tennis Ball Machine FAQ page