Wimbledon organizers have changed their electronic line-calling system to remove the possibility of human error after being forced to apologize for an embarrassing operator mistake.
Officials apologized to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Sonay Kartal following the malfunction during their fourth-round match on Centre Court on Sunday.
After an investigation, organizers 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.
Photo: AP
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 and Croquet Club 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.
“Because she is local, they can say whatever. You took the game away from me,” she said.
Wimbledon issued a statement on Sunday saying the system had been “deactivated in error” for one game.
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 this year, 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.
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