Wimbledon announce major technical changes midway through tournament after they were forced to apologise for error
Sonay Kartal's Last-16 exit to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Sunday was overshadowed by an 'operator error' that meant ball-tracking
technology
was accidentally 'deactivated' for a key point.
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1
Wimbledon have made changes following an error in a match on Sunday
Credit: PA
Though Kartal's return was clearly out, the Hawk-Eye cameras did not pick it up – and umpire Nico Helwerth decided to replay the point.
Wimbledon – who apologised for the error – say their live ELC system 'relies on the cameras and technology working in harmony with the operators and
Review
Officials'.
Following a 'thorough review', the All
England
Club have 'removed the ability for Hawk-Eye operators to manually deactivate the ball tracking'.
Though the source of the issue was a human mistake, tennis bosses say 'this error cannot now be repeated due to the system changes we have made'.
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German official Helwerth was not involved in any matches on Monday but the AELTC say he was simply 'having a rest day'.
Hawk-Eye cameras have replaced line judges on all 18
courts
for this year's Championships.
CEO Sally Bolton said: 'In between matches, the system is deactivated, so it's not functioning when there isn't a match on
court
.
'So, there is a process in place for activating and deactivating the system, and the humans are the people that need to do the activating and deactivating.
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'Why was it turned off mid-match? Well, I don't know. It was a mistake, obviously.
'It had been deactivated. We didn't need to put line judges back on the court again. We needed the system to be active.
Britain's last hope in Wimbledon women's draw Sonay Kartal OUT after huge controversy as rival accuses umpire of bias
'The chair umpire wasn't informed that the system had been deactivated in error.
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'So I can be confident that our system is in the best shape it can possibly be at this stage.'
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