Wimbledon humiliation as major technology failure causes controversy again
Wimbledon endured more electronic line call controversy on Tuesday as a point during the quarter-final featuring Taylor Fritz had to be replayed after the technology suffered a "malfunction".
The American was taking on Karen Khachanov Court 1 when "fault" was mistakenly called during play early in the fourth set. The umpire was quick to get on the phone and later told the crowd the point had to be replayed due to a glitch in the system. She said: "Ladies and gentleman we will replay the last point because of a malfunction. The system is now working."
The All England Club also said in a statement: "The player's service motion began while the BBG was still crossing the net and therefore the system didn't recognise the start of the point. As such the Chair Umpire instructed the point be replayed."
Fritz was able to book his semi-final spot in four sets, but Wimbledon's electronic line calls were again under the microscope after the huge blunder at the weekend, which saw the system on Centre Court being turned off by mistake and missed three calls during Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova's match with Britain's Sonay Kartal.
The decision was made after last year's tournament to rid of line judges and go down the technology route, which has proved divisive, and the organisers have had a number of teething problems.
READ MORE: Ex-Wimbledon finalist sacks coach and ex-Rafael Nadal ally after three months together
The All England Club said after the error in the Pavlyunchenkova-Kartal match that they "continue to have full confidence in the accuracy of the ball-tracking technology".
Wimbledon bosses claimed they had made changes and were strong in their wording as they said in a statement to the BBC: "Following our review, we have now removed the ability for Hawk-Eye operators to manually deactivate the ball tracking. While the source of the issue was human error, this error cannot now be repeated due to the system changes we have made."
Whilst Fritz did not suffer from the same issue - another type of glitch with the technology has now emerged which will raise yet more questions as players and organisers do not appear totally aligned.
Tim Henman, who is a senior figure at the All England Club, claimed that accusations of accuracy from Emma Raducanu and Jack Draper's were "utter garbage" and the system was "100 percent accurate".
Last week Draper claimed: 'I don't think it's 100% accurate'. Raducanu was asked if she trusted the electronic line calls and said: "No, I don't - I think the other players would say the same thing, there were some pretty dodgy ones but what can you do?"
Swiss player Bencic said she was usually a fan of electronic line calling but that at Wimbledon "it's not correct". She added: "We players talk about it and I think most of us have the same opinion."
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