Wimbledon slaps down Raducanu and Draper over AI line judge row

Telegraph

a day ago

Wimbledon has hit back at Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu following their criticism of AI line judges, with All England Club chair Debbie Jevans claiming the players wanted more technology in the first place.
Sources have brushed aside the idea that they might recall line judges despite recent criticism of Hawk-Eye's ball-tracking technology.
Both British No 1s – Draper on Thursday night and Emma Raducanu on Friday – complained in their post-match press conferences that they had been on the wrong end of incorrect calls.
Two leading coaches have also told Telegraph Sport that they have little confidence in Electronic Line Calling (ELC) to make the right decisions at Wimbledon, claiming that the system performs less well on grass than on the hard courts of New York or Melbourne.
But Jevans rejected any suggestion that the system is unreliable during an interview on Saturday. Her message to any mutinous players could be summed up as 'You asked for this in the first place, so why are you complaining now?'
Jevans told the BBC: 'It's funny, because when we did have linesmen, we were constantly asked why we didn't have electronic line calling because it's more accurate than the rest of the tour.'
Raducanu and Draper are not isolated voices on this issue. Two leading coaches, whose players both won matches at Wimbledon this year, have also questioned the Hawk-Eye line-calling procedure in interviews with Telegraph Sport, although they both preferred to keep their identities private for fear of antagonising the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC).
'I don't think it's correct at all,' said the first coach. 'Many calls seem wrong. Bring back umpires and the challenge system.'
The other coach told Telegraph Sport that he had noticed a significant difference in the performance of ball-tracking systems on the various surfaces. 'When we play on hard courts, nobody ever has an issue,' said the coach. 'On clay, there may be more room for debate, because it's a shifting surface and the granules move.
'But on grass this summer, I've really noticed a lot of calls that just look wrong. You can see it from the body language of the players because they hesitate for a moment when they see where the ball has landed. I don't know why it's happening so much, but I think the cameras like the ground to be completely level and that's not always the case, particularly around the baseline after a few days' wear and tear. I've also heard it suggested that the grass grows a small amount each day and that affects the calibration.'
The recent introduction of ELC as the sole arbiter of Wimbledon line calls has provoked other complaints. One deaf tennis-lover wrote to the Lawn Tennis Association to say that they can no longer tell whether a ball was in or out without the hand signals formerly used by the line judges: arm out wide for 'out' and palms down for 'in'.
Even for those with good hearing, it was hard to pick up the automated voice calls on Centre Court during Raducanu's thrilling match against top seed Aryna Sabalenka. Not only was the crowd constantly buzzing with excitement, leading to a slight background murmur, but the closing of the roof added to the swimming pool-style hum.
Meanwhile, on the outer courts, Ben Shelton's match against Rinky Hijikata was suspended at 9.29pm on Thursday – despite Shelton standing just one game short of victory – because the light was declining to the point where officials feared that ELC would not be able to function. Shelton was so frustrated by the decision that he had to be held back from extending his argument with the chair umpire by supervisor Ali Nili.
One game away from winning and play is suspended! 😲
😡 Ben Shelton was not happy after his #Wimbledon match was stopped for bad light, just as he was one hold of serve from beating Rinky Hijikata! 🎾 pic.twitter.com/XTrZ9uCSfx
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) July 3, 2025
On Friday night, Raducanu suggested that Wimbledon's officiating 'was way more accurate back in the day when there were lines judges and you could challenge. It's difficult to deal with. And also [it is] a shame that the tradition's kind of been broken with the linesmen and women'.
The motivation behind the switch, Telegraph Sport understands, was that the All England Club felt uncomfortable about being hold-outs in a world where the two tours (ATP and WTA) and two of the other three majors (the Australian and US Opens) have all done away with human line judges.
There was concern that further incidents of the kind involving Sir Andy Murray last year – which saw Murray failing to challenge a bad line call at a critical moment of his second-round loss to Stefanos Tsitsipas – would be a bad look for the tournament.
But the AELTC may not have realised that the French Tennis Federation intended to keep human line judges at this year's French Open. As FFT president Gilles Moretton explained last month, 'If we stop having those linesmen, those referees, we feel that is not too good for tennis in France maybe, and I think it may be the same in other countries.'
Wimbledon is not the only event to have recently transferred to ELC, with 2025 being the first year when all the ATP events – including not only grass-court tournaments such as Queen's and Eastbourne but also clay court ones like Madrid and Rome – have gone automated.
Teething troubles have cropped up in numerous places, with both Sabalenka and Alexander Zverev becoming so irate about line calls in Stuttgart and Madrid respectively that they took photographs of the ball marks and posted them on social media.
Alexander Zverev posts a photo of a ball mark that was called 'in' by electronic line calling.
"Interesting call"
👀 pic.twitter.com/AQ5KXhToML
— The Tennis Letter (@TheTennisLetter) April 27, 2025
At Wimbledon, sources suggest that the absence of the 300-strong line-judging contingent has not saved the club any money. In fact, it is probably more expensive to set up all the extra cameras on green lamp-posts around the site, while also losing some of the revenue previously paid by clothing giant Ralph Lauren for the exposure granted by pin-striped line judges on the courts.
Furthermore, 80 'match assistants' have been retained to perform duties such as escorting players to their bathroom breaks. Were the whole system to crash for some reason, there would be enough bodies on site to provide full line crews for several courts.
Hawk-Eye is one of several leading ELC providers, which also include Bolt6 and FoxTenn. The system involves ten cameras set up around each court, all capturing 60 high-resolution images per second, of which at least five capture every bounce of the ball. Hawk-Eye claims that the error margin for its ball-tracking system is just 2.2mm although an academic research paper by the University of Cardiff has questioned whether it can consistently be that accurate.
Other research has estimated that human line judges get around eight per cent of calls wrong. But there was one obvious advantage of the old hybrid system that was dispensed with this year. If we estimate that humans are around 92 per cent accurate, and robots around 98 per cent accurate, then a belt-and-braces system involving both should be 99.84 per cent accurate.
Always assuming, that is, that the players choose the right calls to challenge.
Hawk-Eye has been contacted for a response.