A point had to be replayed in the men’s singles quarterfinal match between Taylor Fritz and Karen Khachanov at Wimbledon due to a malfunction of the new electronic line-calling system. It is the latest in a series of problems that have occurred with the tournament’s newly implemented system.
The incident occurred during the opening game of the fourth set on Court No. 1 after Fritz had served at 15-0 and the players exchanged shots. Then came a random “fault” call. Chair umpire Louise Azemar-Engzell stopped play and a few moments later announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, we will replay the last point due to a malfunction.”
The system had tracked Fritz’s shot in the rally as if it was a serve, the All England Club later said. “The player’s service motion began while the (ball boy/ball girl) was still crossing the net and therefore the system didn’t recognize the start of the point. As such the chair umpire instructed the point be replayed,” the club said in a statement.
Fritz was visibly perplexed after the “fault” call, and turned to the umpire’s chair with his arms spread, as if asking “what was that?” Both players weren’t too bothered by having to play the point again through and Khachanov won the point.
Fifth-seeded Fritz went on to win the match 6-3, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (4) and advanced to the semifinals. Khachanov admitted that the fact it was only the opening game of a set was the reason why the players were so calm about it.
“If it would happen on a break point or deuce or maybe tiebreaker, OK, you can get more mad,” the 17th-seeded Khachanov said. “But it was just beginning of the set, 15-Love or Love-15. I don’t remember. It was maybe not that important moment. That’s why I stayed really focused and calm.”
An ‘operator error’, a player terming a game being stolen due to the turning off the ball-tracking technology and the concerned umpire taking a rest day. That’s what has happened within days of Wimbledon opting for electronic line-calling technology for the first time in its 148-year-old tennis history. A day after an ‘operator error’ resulted in ball-tracking technology being turned off for one game in the fourth-round women’s singles match between Sonay Kartal of Britain and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia on Centre Court, the All England Tennis Club has now announced that there will be a change in the technology.
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“Following our review, we have now removed the ability for Hawk-Eye operators to manually deactivate the ball tracking. While the source of the issue was human error, this error cannot now be repeated due to the system changes we have made,” the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) said in a statement to BBC Sport.
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