Wimbledon have taken action to remove the possibility of ‘human error’ after the electronic line calling system was accidentally deactivated on Centre Court.
ELC, brought in at this year’s Championships to replace traditional line judges, was turned off for one game in the fourth-round match between Great Britain’s Sonay Kartal and Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
The All England Club blamed the glitch on an ‘operator error’ and defended umpire Nico Helwerth’s decision to replay a point despite Kartal hitting a ball long.
Pavlyuchenkova was fuming with the decision to play a let and her mood only worsened after it led to her being broken at a crucial moment in the first set.
The former world number 11 admirably broke straight back and then won a tie break on her way to knocking out Britain’s Kartal.
The incident not only frustrated Pavlyuchenkova but led to further questions over the accuracy of ELC following complaints from several players during the tournament.
But the All England Club defended the system and have made a change to ELC to remove the possibility of ‘human error’ during the rest of the tournament.
‘Following our review, we have now removed the ability for Hawk-Eye operators to manually deactivate the ball tracking,’ Wimbledon organisers aid 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.’
More to follow…
