Wimbledon found itself in another embarrassing line-call controversy when Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova accused officials of pro-British bias following a HawkEye technology error during a critical game against Sonay Kartal.
Just days after Emma Raducanu criticized the ‘dodgy’ technology, Kartal hit a ball well beyond the baseline during her fourth-round match with Pavlyuchenkova. The Russian had an advantage on serve, yet the automated system on Centre Court failed to register the ball as out.
Chair umpire Nico Helworth clearly saw the ball was out and attempted to stop play before the automated line judge called out ‘Stop! Stop!’ to halt the action.
After a delay of around four minutes, while Helworth sat on his court-side phone to get to the bottom of the farcical situation, he declared: ‘The electronic line-calling system unfortunately was unable to track the last point so we will replay the point.’
Kartal went on to break serve, prompting a furious Pavlyuchenkova to accuse officials of favouring her British opponent.
‘I don’t know if it’s in or it’s out,’ she raged. ‘How do I know? You cannot prove it. Because she is local, they can say whatever. You took the game away from me.’
This ball from Sonay Kartal was not called out as HawkEye line judge malfunctioned on Sunday
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova couldn’t believe the decision and made her feelings known
The former French Open finalist appear to allege a pro-British bias from the line judging
Helworth responded: ‘The problem is that we have to go with the system. If they tell me it is up and running, there is nothing we can do. If they tell me they don’t have it, that’s the rule unfortunately.’
‘They stole the game from me,’ replied Pavlyuchenkova, who still went on to clinch the opening set. ‘They stole it.’
The Championships have been marred by dodgy decisions since the controversial decision to scrap traditional human line judges in favour of AI – and it has now been made even more farcical that the umpire is unable to make their own decision when the system fails.
A tearful Raducanu hit out at the technology in her press conference following her defeat to Aryna Sabalenka earlier this week. At one stage during the match, she asked the umpire: ‘You saw it out as well, right?’
‘It’s kind of disappointing, the tournament here, that the calls can be so wrong, but for the most part they’ve been okay,’ said Raducanu in her press conference. ‘It’s just, like, I’ve had a few in my other matches, too, that have been very wrong. Hopefully, they can fix that.
‘No, I don’t,’ she replied when asked if she trusted the technology. ‘I think the other players would say the same thing, there were some pretty dodgy ones but what can you do?’
Fellow British No1 Jack Draper has also questioned the accuracy of the technology this week, who also believed some calls were wrong during his defeat to Marin Cilic.
‘I don’t think it’s 100 per cent accurate, in all honesty,” he said after his third second-round exit. ‘A couple of the ones today, it showed a mark on the court. There’s no way the chalk would have showed.’
German umpire Nico Helwerth made the decision to replay the point despite the clear error
Britain’s Kartal went on to save the game point and then break her Russian opponent
Wimbledon hit back at the claims on Saturday as Debbie Jevans, chair of the All England Club, insisted she was confident in the accuracy of the technology.
‘It’s funny, isn’t it, because when we did have linesmen, we were constantly asked why we didn’t have electronic line calling because it’s more accurate than they do the rest of the tour,’ she told the BBC.
‘The players wanted it because they were asking us, why do we have linesmen? Because of potential human error. And now we have it in situ.
‘We have to think of innovation and we’re just moving with what the court and mostly what the players expect.’
When contacted for comment after the incident, a Wimbledon statement was issued reading: ‘Due to operator error the system was deactivated on the point in question. The chair umpire followed the established process.’
