Apple continued to expand its Siri virtual assistant this week with new data integrations for golf and tennis, additions apparently timed to coincide with the start of the Australian Open next Monday.
With the new integrations in place, users can query Siri for live tennis and golf scores, upcoming tournament schedules, player stats, historical data and much more.
For example, Siri now responds to commands such as “How did Roger Federer perform at the Australian Open” and “Who is playing at the Australian Open today.” With the tournament currently in the qualifying rounds, Siri doesn’t yet have an answer to that last question.
Tennis data includes scores and match statistics from the Association of Tennis Professionals, Women’s Tennis Association and Grand Slam dating back to 2016, while golf data covers the major PGA and LPGA tours dating back to 2007.
Before the recent update, Siri directed users searching for tennis or golf information to the web or social media sites like Twitter.
Apple currently offers sports data to users in 26 countries, including major markets like the United States, China, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom. In addition to tennis and golf, Siri can answer users’ questions about baseball, basketball, American football, hockey and soccer.
Apple is continually developing backend support for its virtual assistant technology, which will enter homes with HomePod later this year. Apple’s first smart speaker expected to debut early 2018 Siri integration is built-in, giving owners the ability to access the Siri database, play music and podcasts, control HomeKit devices and much more.
