The contentious Wimbledon electronic line calling (ELC) system malfunctioned again in Taylor Fritz’s quarter-final against Karen Khachanov on Tuesday, resulting in jeers from the Court 1 crowd.
In the first game of the fourth set, at 15-0 on Fritz’s serve, the AI system called the ball “fault” mid-rally, with the ball nowhere near being out of the singles court.
The umpire quickly called “stop”, made a call to colleagues and then explained the situation over the microphone: “We will replay the last point due to a malfunction, the system is now working.”
Fortunately, neither Fritz nor Khachanov held the upper hand during the point, with both players proceeding without protest, though the incident did provoke a few boos from the crowd on No 1 Court.
The incident is the latest contentious situation involving ELC, with the system replacing human line judges this year for the first time in the tournament’s 147-year history.
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova claimed that a game was ‘stolen’ from her in her fourth-round Wimbledon match with Sonay Kartal on Sunday, following a glaring failure.
Britain’s Kartal struck a ground shot well beyond the baseline, as proven by a video replay, but the new ELC technology had failed, meaning the error was not called.
A Wimbledon spokesperson stated on Monday that the incident was caused by “human error”, which has now been removed from the process.
“The live ELC system relies on the Hawk-Eye operators, the review official and the technology to work in harmony,” said a spokesperson.
“This did not happen. In this instance, there was a human error and, as a consequence, we have fully reviewed our processes and made the appropriate changes. We continue to have full confidence in the accuracy of the ball-tracking technology.”
Electronic line calling was created by Hawk-Eye, the pioneering company leading the way in sports technology. The first Hawk-Eye system was developed by British computer expert Paul Hawkins in 2001, and has been deployed by multiple sports including cricket for leg-before-wicket decisions and football’s goal-line technology.
Hawk-Eye replays have been used in tennis since debuting at the US Open in 2006, allowing players to challenge questionable calls. But that will soon be a thing of the past as the same technology feeds back results in play, known as ELC or Hawk-Eye Live.
The Australian and US Opens had already replaced line judges with electronic calling, although the French Open still relies on the human eye. That is a little easier at Roland Garros, where the ball’s landing mark tends to show up on the dusty clay surface.
Players have widely supported the rollout, and Wimbledon organisers felt the tournament could become antiquated if it failed to keep up with technological advances in the game. ELC was first used as an experiment at the ATP Next Gen Finals in Milan in 2018, and was adopted more widely during the Covid-19 pandemic. It has been used on all courts across ATP Tour events in 2025.
The ELC technology works by tracking balls using 18 cameras set up around the court. The cameras capture the ball’s movement as a computer interprets the location in real time, producing an accurate three-dimensional representation of the court and the ball’s trajectory within it.
An automated voice mimics that of a line judge, with a loud call of “out!”, “fault!” or “foot fault” emitted within a tenth of a second. A video operator oversees the technology from an external room. Chair umpires continue to take their seat overlooking the court to enforce the rules of the game.
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