Tracy Austin has given her verdict on whether she likes Hawkeye’s introduction at Wimbledon.
This came after an emotional and highly controversial match between Sonay Kartal and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, in which the latter saw a crucial point stolen from her because the electronic line calling system was not turned on.
The umpire stopped the point mid-way through, but then decided to replay it rather than surrender it to the Russian.
Kartal then claimed the break, leaving Pavlyuchenkova rightly furious.
In the end, the Brit lost, so there was no overwhelming harm done with that horrific call.
However, it was not a good look for a system making its debut at Wimbledon this year.
Tracy Austin says whether she likes Hawkeye at Wimbledon
Speaking to the BBC immediately after the controversy, Austin did not hold back in her assessment of the technology.
However, her claims might be somewhat skewed by the troubles she faced in her own career, outlining how she wouldn’t want the stars of today to suffer through what she did.
The American admitted: ‘I love Hawkeye. I love electronic line calling, because I think it takes away all the uncertainty, it takes all the emotion out of it.
‘You know that the score is correct. I mean, I look at all the matches that I’d played, all the uncertainty of all the calls, you wouldn’t even have the challenge system. We just had to go by a linesperson and hope that they caught those millimetre in or millimetre out correctly.
‘I think this takes a lot of doubt out. This was just kind of a one-off, and I hope it’s fixed.’
Naturally, tennis fans were furious with Hawkeye’s failure, and were not so forgiving.
Wimbledon abandon tradition for faulty new system
Realistically, there is too much money and too much at stake in tennis nowadays to leave line calls up to human error.
Its widespread introduction makes perfect sense.
However, after a handful of high-profile gaffes now at this year’s Wimbledon, it’s worth remembering all the tradition they sacrificed in favour of this faulty mechanism.
So many line judges were relieved of their duties, many of whom had been doing that role for years.
It was a sad departure from what makes Wimbledon so special.
Had Hawkeye worked instantly, there could have been few complaints with such a landmark decision. Alas, it has not, and as such, scrutiny is expected.
In the long run, electronic line-calling had to be implemented. But whilst it remains somewhat unreliable, perhaps Wimbledon might have jumped the gun with their decision to abolish human line calling so soon.
