There has been some controversy at Wimbledon this year that Jim Courier believes needs to be fixed.
Every Grand Slam tournament receives criticism, with Roland Garros getting backlash for its night session matches.
Now the attention has turned to Wimbledon, which removed line judges for the first time at the 2025 tournament.
This change has seen them join the Australian Open and the US Open, but a fault in the system has seen a call for more change.
Jim Courier calls for Wimbledon to make immediate change
During the fourth round match at Wimbledon between Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Sonay Kartal, controversy struck between the latter stages of the first set.
On game point for Pavlyuchenkova at 4-4, Kartal appeared to hit the ball out, but no call was made by the electronic line calling and instead a call of ‘Stop, stop’ came from the system.
After the system was unable to retrieve the line call, chair umpire Nico Helwerth called for the point to be replayed.
Pavlyuchenkova would go on to lose that game, and would tell Helwerth that he ‘Stole the game’ from her.
Wimbledon has since released an apology statement to Pavlyuchenkova, who went on to win the match, and now former world number one Courier has had his say.
Taylor Fritz believes a rule should change after this, and it appears that Courier agrees that Wimbledon should do something about this as soon as possible.
“I smell a loophole that needs to be closed,” Courier said on Tennis Channel Live. “Chair umpires for years have overruled bad line calls. And if Hawk-eye is unable to make a call which is that far out, the chair umpire should be empowered to overrule that.
“They should not be able to just say we shall replay the point. If that ball is out by six feet, are we still in the same place where we are still not allowed to?
“If I’m understanding correctly, that sounds like the rules of engagement. That is a loophole which by tomorrow should be closed.”
Tennis Channel host Prakash Amritraj echoed the sentiment of Courier, “I agree. This is the first time where Wimbledon has not had lines people. They really should close it [the loophole] within the next day.
“That was not close. So when it’s egregious like that, that is their job. Things come up that you wouldn’t expect, you have to come up and make a call.”
How has Sonay Kartal responded to the controversial incident in her match?
Unsurprisingly, this topic was brought to both Pavlyuchenkova and Kartal in their respective post-match press conferences.
Despite the criticism for how the situation was handled, Kartal suggested that chair umpire Helwerth managed it as best as he could have.
“That situation is a rarity,” said Kartal. “I don’t think it’s really ever happened, if it has. What can you do? The umpire’s trying his best in that situation. I think he handled it fine.
“I think the system just malfunctioned a little bit and I think the fairest way was what he did, to replay the point. I think obviously it was just a bit unlucky that happened. But I think it’s.. there’s hardly been any of them.”
She added when asked if she could see the call, “It’s unfortunate for me. I’m quite short. So where the net tape is, a lot of the time I lose my vision so I can’t look over the baseline. But from where I was, I couldn’t see.
“From my point, I felt like I hit the backhand clean. Maybe I have to look at the replay. My vision was kind of blinded.
“When the point stopped, I didn’t really know what was… I thought maybe it was a let or something came on the court. I couldn’t see.”
Despite the controversy, Kartal is now confirmed to rise to a career-high ranking and will be the British number two when the new WTA rankings are released.
While Pavlyuchenkova continues her progression through the tournament, as she has now reached her first Wimbledon quarter-final since 2016.
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