Wimbledon is over and, with Andy Murray winning his nation’s biggest tennis event, millions across the country will be keen to emulate their homegrown hero over the next few weeks and months.

The great thing about sport is that anyone can join in. It doesn’t matter what your level is because if you can swing a racquet and move around a bit, you can play tennis in some form. But now the ability to take your game to the next level is being afforded to casual and amateur players as well as professionals by health centre chain, Virgin Active, who are developing a drone to aid tennis players with their technique.

It's time to take your #tennis game to new heights with the #dronevic #wimbledon https://t.co/bAnLwkqghS

— Virgin Active UK (@VirginActiveUK) July 1, 2016

The perfectly / terribly / wonderfully (delete as appropriate) named ‘drone-ovic’ is designed to drop balls onto the court at varying angles and heights, allowing players to develop their technique in a more lifelike setting.

Traditional ball machines will only give you certain angles and speeds, but ‘Drone-ovic’ gives you the opportunity to hone techniques in a setting that feels more like an actual tennis match, allowing players to practise specific scenarios where their game needs work.

“The great thing about Drone-ovic is it recreates the serve and smash experience with greater accuracy,” Virgin Active’s Head of Racquets, Gary Stewart, said in a press release sent to Mashable. “By dropping tennis balls from high and unexpected angles it keeps members on their toes and improves technique and agility.”

Participation is one of the the main buzz words in sport right now, especially when it comes to young people. With so many distractions outside of sport – and the opportunity to sit inside on the sofa and play sport on games consoles instead of in the real world – it’s important that people are given the incentive to participate.

But, like anything, sport is often only enjoyable when you’re actually good at it: it’s no fun when you’re struggling to keep the ball in the court and frustration usually leads to quitting before you’ve even truly begun. Although it’s easy to play sport, the honeymoon period can soon wear off.

‘Drone-ovic’, and technology more generally, can help with that by not only getting people interested in or involved in sport, but by keeping them involved longer than they might otherwise have been.

The drone also features a 4k camera, allowing players and coaches to analyse technique and assess what needs to be worked on after the exercise, allowing amateur players an innovative training technique and giving them access to the types of training that professional players would enjoy.

Most training drills are designed to create automatic reactions in matches. If a player spends hours repeating one technique, it becomes second nature whenever the scenario occurs in a match. But until now, it has been hugely difficult to recreate the match scenarios in training, especially in tennis. Perhaps drone technology will be the catalyst for sport generally to augment traditional training techniques in order to make them more relevant to match conditions.

Ironically, it’s advancements in technology that are bringing tennis training drills closer to real life tennis!