Wimbledon changes line-calling system after embarrassing blunder

Straits Times

12 hours ago

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Hawkeye cameras are pictured at the All England Club.
LONDON – Wimbledon chiefs have made a change to their electronic line-calling system to remove the possibility of human error after being forced to apologise for an embarrassing operator mistake.
Officials apologised to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Sonay Kartal following the malfunction during their fourth-round match on Centre Court on Sunday.
After an investigation, organisers admitted the technology was turned off in error on a section of the court for a game, with the mistake only becoming apparent when a shot from Britain's Kartal that clearly missed the baseline was not called out.
Responding to criticism of the blunder, All England Club officials have taken away the option of manually turning off ball-tracking.
'Following our review, we have now removed the ability for Hawk-Eye operators to manually deactivate the ball tracking,' the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) said in a statement to BBC Sport.
'While the source of the issue was human error, this error cannot now be repeated due to the system changes we have made.'
Had the call been correct, it would have given Russia's Pavlyuchenkova a 5-4 lead in the first set, but instead umpire Nico Helwerth ruled the point should be replayed, with Kartal going on to win the game.
The Russian, who won the match in straight sets, accused the official of home bias, saying: 'Because she is local, they can say whatever. You took the game away from me.'
Wimbledon had issued a statement on Sunday saying the system had been 'deactivated in error' for one game by those operating the system.
Prior to Wimbledon's announcement of the system change, All England Club chief executive Sally Bolton told reporters on Monday that the technology was 'working optimally'.
'The issue we had was human error in terms of the tracking system having been inadvertently deactivated, and then the chair (umpire) not being made aware of the fact that it had been deactivated,' she said.
'We've spoken to the players, we've apologised to them, we've very quickly moved into reviewing everything that had happened yesterday afternoon and putting in place the appropriate changes to the processes.'
A fully automated system has replaced human line judges at Wimbledon in 2025, in line with the Australian Open and the US Open.
But the glitch in Sunday's match follows concerns raised by other players about the technology, including British stars Emma Raducanu and Jack Draper.
Around 80 former line judges are employed as match assistants, with two on each court offering support to the umpire.
But Bolton said there was no need to put them back on the courts.
'The system was functional,' she said. 'It had been deactivated. We didn't need to put line judges back on the court again, we needed the system to be active.' AFP