Wimbledon prides itself on being perfect, or at least as close as is humanly possible to being perfect.
From the grass being cut to precisely 8mm long to the club’s all-white clothing rule to the tournament’s willingness to shun sponsors in its desire to keep the courts looking “clean” (losing potentially millions of pounds in income in the process), Wimbledon is eternally striving for perfection.
This year, however, the flawlessness that Wimbledon prides itself upon has been well and truly shattered. And ironically, it’s been destroyed as a direct result of Wimbledon, and tennis more generally, pursuing perfection.
It’s the automated electronic line calling (ELC) that’s been the problem. Even for those who have watched only the bare minimum of this year’s Wimbledon, it’s been almost impossible to miss the controversy caused by the ELC over the past week.
The first major issue came in a crucial moment in British number three Sonay Kartal’s match against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. On game point, Kartal hit the ball long but as no “out” call came from the ELC, the umpire ruled the point should be replayed. Kartal won the replayed point before going on to break Pavlyuchenkova’s serve. Ultimately, the Russian won the match, rendering the ELC malfunction far less important and decisive than it may have been had the final result gone in Kartal’s favour, but it did little to enhance the reputation of ELC. It transpired, after the match, that the ELC system had been inadvertently switched off for an entire game.
And to compound Wimbledon’s problems, the following day, ELC malfunction number two happened.Just hours after All England Club officials expressed “full confidence in the system”, it broke down again. During the men’s singles quarter-final between Taylor Fritz and Karen Khachanov, a point had to be stopped mid-rally due to the system malfunctioning and although this also had negligible bearing on the final outcome of the match, it cast yet more doubt over the reliability of the system.
The introduction of ELC at Wimbledon entirely replaced human line-judges, who had been calling the lines at the tournament for 148 years. In itself, it’s not an unreasonable move given that computers calling the lines should, in theory, be more reliable than humans who, as every player knows and has probably been victim of, can make some really huge mistakes. Statistically, the automated line-calling system is more reliable and less prone to errors than humans.
But despite knowing this, I still don’t like it.
I’m extremely uncomfortable with the take-over of electronic systems that’s happening not only in tennis, but in many sports.
I realise having this opinion only serves to highlight both the fact that I’m stuck in the 1800s, and my utter hypocrisy given I was someone who, as an athlete, would go absolutely off my head every time I got a bad call from a line judge. But despite this, I still deeply dislike the growing influence of automated systems and the way they’re fazing out human influence on sporting decisions.
I'm not the only one who’s less than convinced. British number ones, Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu, are just two of the players who have called into question the accuracy of the calls by the ELC with the automated system, and its mistakes, apparently the “talk of the locker room”, according to several players.
There’s a number of problems with ELC and the wider takeover of automated systems in sport that’s displacing humans. Yes, computers will, generally, be more reliable than people. But in the mad rush to bring in these automated systems, they’ve been introduced long before they’re truly fit for purpose. Computers and automated systems should only be playing this hugely significant role in top level sport if they’re close to 100 percent accurate.
We’ve seen in tennis, football and every other sport that uses automated systems, this ideal level of accuracy is far from the current reality. We might get to a point where the systems are almost infallible but until then, their introduction should have been vetoed. We’re already at the stage that human umpires and referees are slaves to these electronic systems, despite the fact we all know they make mistakes.
And my second misgiving about ELC and other automated systems is that, in sport’s pursuit of perfection in terms of decision-making, so much of the entertainment value is being lost.
Yes, referees, umpires and line judges getting calls wrong may make for a frustrating day for players who are on the wrong end of certain decisions, but my goodness it made for an entertaining afternoon or evening of sport. I just can’t see how electronic calls enhance the sporting experience for the fans. It’s time-consuming and, once the novelty has worn off, pretty dull to watch. And, even worse, it’s still not always right.
I know I'm fighting a losing battle; automated line calling is here to stay, in the same way that VAR in football and every other electronic system in any other sport you want to name is here for good. We’ve seen the last of line judges at Wimbledon, and at most high-level tennis tournaments, and we’re seeing diminishing authority and decreased appetite for any human involvement in decision-making in sport.
In the end, ELC and its ilk might end up as a more reliable and accurate way to referee and umpire matches. We’re certainly not at that point now, though, and the journey to get there is doing quite considerable damage to sport.
