Sport
For the first time in 148 years, Wimbledon has no line judges
The All England Lawn Tennis Club, London
CNN
—
Pauline Eyre still remembers the “extraordinary feeling” of making her first appearance at Wimbledon aged 21, taking in the noise and the crowds as she marched onto the pristine grass courts, neat and pillowy under her feet.
Eyre, however, had no intentions of hitting a serve or swiping at a forehand, nor dreamed of lifting a trophy in two weeks’ time. She even calls herself “a pretty bad junior player” who regularly lost in the first round of local tournaments.
But under the looming shadow of Centre Court, she had reached the pinnacle of her vocation as a line judge. That moment, Eyre tells CNN Sports, was “a great feeling of pride … going out as that team of people so visibly different.”
Line judges have long been an iconic and instantly-recognizable facet of Wimbledon, decked out in Ralph Lauren uniforms and often considered the sporting world’s best-dressed officials.
But as of this year, that tradition has come to an end. Organizers announced in October that an electronic calling system would be introduced at future tournaments, doing away with human line judges.
“At the end of the day, a tennis match is sport, and sport is about people,” says Eyre. “And I don’t think technology necessarily makes everything better. I don’t think it’s improving the quality of the line calling because line calling was always excellent.
“It takes away that bit for the players where they need to deal with adversity. If they don’t like a call, they can’t argue with the technology. … It’s about the player who does the best in adversity. You take away the humanity from tennis, you’re taking away a lot of what it is: human beings striving against each other and competition.”
Line judges, Eyre adds, were “part of the furniture of the court” at Wimbledon, their uniforms “so striking and so different to any uniform anywhere else in the world.”
But the tournament’s shift to electronic line calling (ELC) is in step with the rest of the tennis world. The ATP and WTA Tours have adopted the system, as have the Australian and US Opens. Roland-Garros remains the only grand slam competition using human line judges for “out” and “fault” calls.
For Wimbledon to follow this trend might not seem like a particularly radical move, but the grass-court grand slam, brimming with history and old-school values, is often viewed as a separate entity to other tournaments, a world unto itself.
The decision, according to All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) chief executive Sally Bolton, was made to ensure “maximum accuracy in our officiating” and to give players “the same conditions” as for most other events on tour.
“(It) was probably inevitable,” Andrew Jarrett, the tournament referee at Wimbledon between 2006 and 2019, tells CNN Sports. “It is almost certainly correct to go down this route. Why? Well, provided it is set up correctly – and that’s crucial – then you get a very good result, and it’s proven to be better than human eyesight, so therefore it’s seen as being an improvement.
“From a technology point of view, if it exists and if it improves, why wouldn’t you use it as the line that’s been taken across the world?”
Jarret, however, acknowledges the “cost to the human side” of the sport, as well as disincentivizing young officials who can no longer aspire to call lines at Wimbledon.
Eyre makes the same point. “You have to be a bit of a saint to want to spend your weekends umpiring children’s tennis matches at the local club without the carrot of Wimbledon at the end of it,” she says. “Why would a 15-year-old who’s a club tennis player or a county tennis player want to go into line judging when there’s nothing really in it for them?”
As for the players, the reaction has been mixed. Women’s top seed Aryna Sabalenka said that she is “50/50” but “probably leaning towards the electronic system” because it removes the question of challenging a line judge’s call.
But defending women’s champion Barbora Krejčíková said that she “like(s) the old traditional style,” while American star Frances Tiafoe enjoyed the “fanfare” of being able to challenge a line judge.
There have been occasional teething issues with electronic calling, too. During Wednesday’s second-round match between Madison Keys and Olga Danilović, the automated system made an unprompted “out” call between points, causing brief confusion and a ripple of laughter from the crowd.
Source: edition.cnn.com
