Wimbledon chiefs were forced to issue a second statement on Tuesday after another blunder occurred in a high-profile match involving the Hawk-Eye line-calling technology
Tim Henman’s confident assertion that the new Wimbledon line-calling system is “absolutely 100 per cent accurate” was proven wrong after yet another blunder on Tuesday. Taylor Fritz and Karen Khachanov were forced to replay a point after the technology malfunctioned in their quarter-final on Court One.
Fritz moved into the semi-finals with a 6-3, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 win on Tuesday afternoon, but there was another talking point from the match. It came after “fault” was mistakenly called by the Hawk-Eye system during play early in the fourth set.
“Ladies and gentleman, we will replay the last point because of a malfunction,” chair umpire Louise Azemar-Engzell said. “The system is now working.”
The All England Club also said in a statement: “The player’s service motion began while the BBG was still crossing the net and therefore the system didn’t recognise the start of the point. As such the Chair Umpire instructed the point be replayed.”
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The error came a day after Wimbledon were forced to release a statement apologising for and supposedly rectifying the farcical scenes that occurred in Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova’s match against Sonay Kartal. A shot from Kartal which was clearly out was not called by the automated system, forcing the point to be replayed.
All England Club committee member Henman had previously come out to bat for the line-calling system following criticism from British No.1s Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu. “The narrative around players questioning the accuracy of the calling is just utter garbage,” Henman said. “Is the technology accurate? Absolutely, 100 per cent.”
Khachanov isn’t so sure. “Yeah, look, to be honest, I’m more for line umpires, to be honest. I don’t know. You feel a little bit too big, too alone without line umpires,” he said after his defeat.
“At the same time, it looks like AI and electronic line calls have to be very precise and make no mistakes, but we’ve seen a couple. That’s questionable why this is happening. Is it just an error of the machine, or what’s the reason?
“Like today, I think there were a few calls. I don’t know, very questionable if it’s really touching the line or not. At the same time during one point, the machine called it out during the rally. Sometimes it’s scary to let machines do what they want, you know?
Asked about the erroneous call of “out”, he added: “Yeah, what can I do? I can argue, or I can be angry about it or just continue playing. It’s not in my power. It’s already happened. I need to kind of accept it, and that’s it.
“It was not a super important point. If it would happen on a break point or deuce or maybe tiebreaker, okay, you can get more mad. But it was just at the beginning of the set, 15-0 or 0-15. I don’t remember. It was maybe not that important moment. That’s why I stayed really focused and calm.”
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