Taylor Fritz has delivered his thoughts on electronic line calling after yet another high-profile error occurred in his Wimbledon quarter-final match.
With the 27-year-old up two sets to one, serving in the first game of the fourth, he and his opponent, Karen Khachanov, were engaged in a routine rally.
However, mid-way through the point, the Hawkeye system inexplicably called a fault, with the umpire then stating: “Ladies and gentlemen, we will replay the last point because of a malfunction. The system is now working.”
This drew boos from the crowd, and has summoned the following assessment from Taylor Fritz in the aftermath.
Taylor Fritz gives his honest verdict on Hawkeye at Wimbledon
Speaking at his post-match press conference, Fritz did not hold back in his assessment of Hawkeye when asked about its latest gaffe.
Having drawn huge scrutiny for the huge technological mistake made in Sonay Kartal’s match, there was another incident during the American’s win over Khachanov.
Asked about it, and if he would prefer to continue with it, he admitted: “To be honest, I’m more for line umpires, to be honest. I don’t know. You feel a little bit [like the] court is too big, too alone without line umpires.
“At the same time, it looks like AI and electronic line calls have to be very precise and no mistakes, but we’ve seen a couple. That’s questionable why this is happening. Is just like an error of the machine, or what’s the reason?
“Like today, I think there were a few calls. I don’t know, very questionable if it’s really touching the line or not. At the same time, during one point, the machine called it just out during the rally. Sometimes it’s scary to let machines do what they want, you know?
“Yeah, what can I do? I can argue, or I can be angry about it or just continue playing. It’s not in my power. It’s already happened. I need to kind of accept it, and that’s it.
“It was not kind of super important point. If it would have happened on a break point or deuce or maybe a tiebreaker, okay, you can get more mad. But it was just the beginning of the set, 15-Love or Love-15. I don’t remember. It was maybe not that important a moment. That’s why I stayed really focused and calm.”
Should Wimbledon stick with electronic line calling?
Similarly to football, now that Wimbledon has introduced technology into the tournament, they can’t really remove it.
All they can do is persevere and try to iron out all of the mistakes.
And, given that human error shouldn’t really come into it, that should be a doable task.
Hawkeye has rightly come under some intense scrutiny at these Championships, but every new introduction to a sport often does.
The fact of the matter is, there is just too much money in tennis nowadays for such huge decisions to be left to human error.
Technology is the safest long-term bet, and therefore Wimbledon will have to stick with it now going forward.
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