Tennis Ladder now lives on your wrist. Record your matches with live heart rate, log the score with a spin of the Digital Crown, and see how hard you worked — right from the court.
Getting the watch app
There's nothing extra to install from the App Store — the watch app comes with the iPhone app (version 1.0.28 or later).
- Update Tennis Ladder on your iPhone.
- Open the Watch app on your iPhone → My Watch → scroll to Available Apps → tap Install next to Tennis Ladder.
That's it. If you have automatic app installs turned on, it may already be there.
Your fixtures, on your wrist
Open the app on your watch and swipe through your upcoming matches — one per page, like the weather app. Each shows who you're playing and when, with a Start button to begin recording. The last page is Quick start for a casual hit.
You can also start from your phone: accepted matches show a Start on Apple Watch button that sends a Tennis workout straight to your wrist.
Recording a match
Tap Start and the watch records a proper tennis workout — time on court, calories and live heart rate. Rain break? Pause and pick up where you left off. While you play, the fixture on your phone mirrors it live: elapsed time, calories and heart rate, with an End button if your watch is back in your bag.
Your workout always saves to Apple Health, whether or not you log a score.
Logging the score from the watch
When you end the workout, the watch asks "Log the result?" — choose who won, then set each set score by turning the Digital Crown (just like setting an alarm). The result goes through your phone into the app, exactly as if you'd typed it there — same confirmations, same points.
Your health snapshot
Swipe past your fixtures for a private health page: heart-rate variability, resting heart rate, blood oxygen, respiratory rate, wrist temperature and last night's sleep — each with a range based on your own recent history. The watch describes each reading neutrally as above, within or below your recent range; it isn't a medical assessment.
History shows your past tennis workouts with a heart-rate chart, intensity and time in each heart-rate zone.
Attaching a workout to your result
Played with your watch on (any watch that saves tennis workouts to Apple Health works, including SwingVision)? After you log a result in the app, you'll be offered the overlapping workout — attach it and your match card shows calories, average and peak heart rate, and time on court.
On Android the same works through Health Connect: Garmin, Samsung Health, Fitbit and Polar all sync into it, and the app offers the attach automatically after you log a result.
Who can see my health data?
Nobody, unless you choose otherwise. Health data is private to you by default:
- Attached workouts show only on your own view of the match.
- Ticking Share with the club shows a summary (calories, heart rate, time on court) on the match card for others, and counts your effort on the club's monthly effort board — bragging rights only, never ranking points, never ratings.
- You can untick sharing at any time, and health data is never used for anything else.
- Junior players can never share health data — the block is enforced on our servers, not just in the app.
Your health data, protected
The details, for the properly curious:
- You opt in twice. The app can't read anything until you grant permission in Apple Health or Health Connect (your phone asks you directly), and nothing is stored until you choose to attach a workout to a specific match. You can revoke the permission any time in your phone's health settings.
- We store the minimum. Per attached match: time on court, active calories, average and peak heart rate, a small heart-rate curve and the name of the device that recorded it. That's the whole list.
- The watch's health snapshot stays on your wrist. Sleep, heart-rate variability, blood oxygen, respiratory rate and wrist temperature are read from Apple Health on your device, shown to you, and never uploaded.
- Delete any time. Remove an attached workout with one tap — it's deleted, not hidden. Deleting your account deletes all your health data with it.
- It never affects the tennis. Ratings, points and ladder positions never read health data. It's your story, not a scoreboard.
- Everything travels encrypted (TLS) and is stored encrypted at rest. The full formal wording lives in our Privacy Policy.
Do I need an Apple Watch to use Tennis Ladder?
No — everything else in the app works exactly as before. On Android, workout attach works via Health Connect (see above), and everyone can see shared workout summaries and the effort board whatever they play with.