The Philippines might always be a basketball nation, but Alexandra “Alex” Eala seems to have singlehandedly hijacked the conversation right now.
Fresh off her historic win at the 2026 Mubadala DC Open, her momentum is making us want to pick up a racket. The reality, though, is that booking an open tennis court in this country is a chore — assuming you even have the gear to begin with.
But if you just want to ride the wave without leaving your workspace, the indie web game LiveWebTennis might be a good fix. The site, which debuted back in April, was built by a two-person development duo from India and Ukraine. Their goal was simple: make motion-controlled sports accessible to people who don’t own a console or gaming PC. And they pretty much nailed the execution.
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LiveWebTennis basically turns your smartphone into a motion-tracking console. You don’t need to buy a controller or download a companion app. Your device’s front-facing camera is the controller — you swing your arm, and your player swings. Starting a match is as simple as loading the page and tapping “Quick Match,” stepping back from the screen, and swinging your arm. The engine maps your movements in real time, translating physical swings into on-screen forehands.
Think of it as a web-based homage to the Wii Sports era.
Obviously, giving camera access to a random web app sets off immediate privacy alarms. The developers of LiveWebTennis address this immediately by asking for permission only after you start playing a match. More importantly, the video processing happens locally on your hardware. Your awkward shadow-swings aren’t uploaded to a server somewhere.
You aren’t going to perfect your actual form here, and the motion tracking comes with the expected quirks of a web experiment. But it actually works. Like us, you’ve probably been glued to Eala’s matches and suddenly have the urge to hit a few virtual balls between meetings — and LiveWebTennis delivers exactly that, serving up an accessible, entertaining distraction you can play anytime, anywhere, on almost any device.
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