Wimbledon suffered an embarrassing technical glitch on Centre Court during home favourite Sonay Kartal’s clash with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
At a crucial moment in the first set, a confused Pavlyuchenkova gestured to the chair umpire after believing a shot from Great Britain’s Kartal had sailed long.
Electronic line calling has replaced traditional line judges for the first time at this year’s Championships but an automatic call of ‘out’ was not forthcoming, much to the surprise of Pavlyuchenkova.
Seconds later an ‘error’ code was called out by the ELC system and replays showed the ball clearly bounced past the baseline.
The chair umpire made a call in which it was confirmed that ELC had gone down during the point and announced that it would be replayed.
That appeared hugely unfair to Pavlyuchenkova, given replays showed the ball was clearly long, but the umpire said he had no choice but to play a let.
Pavlyuchenkova would have held serve had she won that point but instead Kartal was given another chance to break and did just that, much to the enjoyment of a partisan Centre Court crowd.
Former world number 11 Pavlyuchenkova was understandably still angry at the changeover and told the umpire the glitch ‘stole the game’.
BBC pundits Anne Keothavong and Tracy Austin feared for Pavlyuchenkovaand said it would be difficult to come back mentally from such a mishap.
But Pavlyuchenkova showed admirable resolve to break straight back and went on to win a tie-break to clinch the first set against Britain’s Kartal.
More to follow…
