Fading human touch in electronic line calling

This was Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova’s response when asked how she would have felt if that point, which has since become the talking point of Wimbledon, cost her the match: “I would just say that I hate Wimbledon and never come back here.”

- Rutvick Mehta

Pavlyuchenkova could later chuckle about it because she could be human about it (and, well, because it didn’t cost her the match).

That human touch has, incidentally, gone missing around the on-court officiating system at Wimbledon. At, ironically, a Grand Slam which prides on tradition.

After 147 years of existence, Wimbledon has done away with line judges those crisply dressed men and women scattered around the green that sprung to life the theatre around line calls and debatable decisions. They've been replaced by 12 cameras per court for an electronic line-calling system beaming on 144 screens in a room operated by 50-odd humans.

That's not quite the problem, for, other than the French Open, all Slams and many ATP and WTA tournaments now have this system in place. That this system was absent for practically one full game for calls on half of the Centre Court also wasn't the pressing problem (unless, of course, you're Pavlyuchenkova who had to replay a game point she had won before losing the point and the game).