Wimbledon: Another electronic line-call blunder comes in Taylor Fritz’s quarter-final win over Karen Khachanov | Tennis News
Wimbledon underwent another malfunction of the electronic call caused by the movement of a Ball Boy in the quarter -final victory of Taylor Fritz against Karen Khachanov on Tuesday.
The Swedish referee Louise Azemar-Engzell called “stop” in the opening match of the fourth set on the first courtyard when “Fault” was badly announced after a right blow of Fritz landed well inside the basic line.
The cry of “fault” rather than “getting out”, and the positioning of the ball suggested that the technology still followed the service of Fritz as opposed to a rally.
The organizers of the tournament verified that the theory, explaining that the system had failed to reset because the ball of the first service of Fritz was always recovered when it started to align its second.
Wimbledon said they had made changes to their Hawk-Eye system after a major dysfunction during the Sonay Kartal match against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova during the fourth round
None of the two players showed many reaction when the manager of the Azemar-Engzell match ordered the point to be replayed.
Fritz led 2-1 on the sets at this stage before finishing a 6-3 6-4 1-6 7-6 (4) victory in two hours and 36 minutes.
“The player’s service movement started while the BBG (Ball Boy or Girl) always crossed the net and the system therefore did not recognize the start of the point,” read an All England Club statement.
“As such, the chair referee asked that the point be replayed.”
The tournament organizers said on Sunday that they were confident to avoid other problems with technology after a major error in the defeat of Sonay Kartal in the fourth round against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the female draw.
On this occasion, the new system did not call “out” when one shot by Kartal rebounded well behind the basic line.
If the call had been correct, Pavlyuchenkova would have taken an advance of 5-4 in the first set. Referee Nico Helwerth rather judged that the point should be replayed, with Kartal winning the match.
However, a major scandal was avoided while the Russian, who accused the civil servant at home, was fighting on progress.
After an investigation, the organizers admitted that the technology had been mistakenly discouraged on a section of the court. The Ten England lawn tennis club later confirmed that they had made changes to the system, deleting the possibility for Hawk-Eye operators to manually deactivate the balloon.
The main British duo Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu each complained about the precision of the system, which is widely used during the tour but which has just been introduced into SW19.
The last incident is another embarrassment for the championships in the middle of the controversy concerning the abolition of line judges.
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