Wimbledon announce major technical changes midway through tournament after they were forced to apologise for error
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WIMBLEDON has made major changes to its Electronic Line Calling system and are confident there will be NO further cock-ups.
Sonay Kartal's Last-16 exit to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Sunday was overshadowed by an 'operator error' that meant ball-tracking technology was accidentally 'deactivated' for a key point.
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Wimbledon have made changes following an error in a match on Sunday
Credit: PA
Though Kartal's return was clearly out, the Hawk-Eye cameras did not pick it up – and umpire Nico Helwerth decided to replay the point.
Wimbledon – who apologised for the error – say their live ELC system 'relies on the cameras and technology working in harmony with the operators and Review Officials'.
Following a 'thorough review', the All England Club have 'removed the ability for Hawk-Eye operators to manually deactivate the ball tracking'.
Though the source of the issue was a human mistake, tennis bosses say 'this error cannot now be repeated due to the system changes we have made'.
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German official Helwerth was not involved in any matches on Monday but the AELTC say he was simply 'having a rest day'.
Hawk-Eye cameras have replaced line judges on all 18 courts for this year's Championships.
CEO Sally Bolton said: 'In between matches, the system is deactivated, so it's not functioning when there isn't a match on court.
'So, there is a process in place for activating and deactivating the system, and the humans are the people that need to do the activating and deactivating.
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'Why was it turned off mid-match? Well, I don't know. It was a mistake, obviously.
'It had been deactivated. We didn't need to put line judges back on the court again. We needed the system to be active.
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'The chair umpire wasn't informed that the system had been deactivated in error.
'So I can be confident that our system is in the best shape it can possibly be at this stage.'
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