Bring back human line judges, Wimbledon

Telegraph

5 days ago

Wimbledon may seem the last place to act as a backdrop to science fiction. But the fact is in the home of strawberries, cream and Sir David Beckham on the front row of the Royal Box we are seeing unfold this fortnight a narrative that might well serve as the starting point for the next iteration of the Terminator franchise. On the crisp lawns of the All England Club we are in the midst of a battle between humanity and the computer. In SW19 there is a growing rage against the machines.
This year it was decided to dispense with line judges. The problem, we were told, is they made mistakes. And computers apparently don't. So never mind that, in their smart Ralph Lauren blazers, the lovely old humans add to the colour of the event, never mind that part of the fun is seeing them swerve at the last moment to avoid a 130mph Jannik Sinner serve, they were to be replaced by something called Electronic Line Calling. Error was to be removed. Everything was to become unequivocal. Trust the machine, we were told, and it will get it right.
The pursuit of perfection in adjudication has been an ambition of Wimbledon's ever since John McEnroe erupted on No 1 Court back in 1981. McEnroe's beef that day was simple: his eyesight was better than the umpire's. He could see his shot was on the line, even as it was called out. 'You cannot be serious,' he whined, delivering the comment that will doubtless serve as his epitaph. This was human error exposed: a wrong call horribly skewing the course of the match.
Then, in 2007, it seemed such disputes were behind us. Hawk-Eye was introduced, a piece of camera technology used in cricket that tracked the ball and could decide on its trajectory. Players were entitled to challenge a line judge's call and Hawk-Eye would act as the court of appeal. The process became part of the fun, the crowd clapping as the animation was played on the court's scoreboard, cooing in delight at its analysis. And this hybrid system served to everyone's satisfaction. It was reckoned essentially foolproof. Research has estimated that human line judges get around eight per cent of calls wrong. As my colleague Simon Briggs wrote at the weekend, if humans are around 92 per cent accurate, and robots 98 per cent accurate, then both should be 99.84 per cent accurate.
That, however, was not deemed enough for the Wimbledon authorities. They decided to go entirely robot. Get rid of the human bit and argument would be redundant. There was just one problem: what if the robots weren't as good as we assumed? What if the disembodied AI voices were too quiet to be properly heard? What if the machines got it wrong?
Across all the courts this year, we have seen players stand looking bemused at calls, if not channelling their inner McEnroe then at least wondering why, given their eyesight is generally magnificent, they cannot believe what they are seeing. Time and again, we have seen mechanical calls that have just looked wrong, just ask Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu. Less Artificial Intelligence more Artificial Myopia. And if they are in doubt, the players have no recourse. There is no challenge system. Instead on the scoreboard will come up a Hawk-Eye animation of a 'close call'. But given the Hawk-Eye and the computer are working from the same data, the result is always the same.
'It's kind of disappointing,' said Raducanu earlier this week, 'that the calls can be so wrong.'
The nadir came when the new British hope Sonay Kartal was playing Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Sunday on Centre Court. A Kartal shot landed so far beyond the line it was practically in Clapham. Pavlyuchenko, seeing it clearly fall in the wrong place, returned before looking to the umpire to intervene. But no disembodied call came from the machines. And the umpire, apparently now required always to follow what AI instructs, did not intervene, rule it was out and give the point to the Russian. Instead, to much bemusement all round, he stopped play, eventually ruling the point be played again. This time, Kartal won it. As it happened, the overall result was not affected: Pavyluchenko won the match. But that could have been the moment technology completely altered destiny. And it simply would not have happened under the old system. A line judge would have had to be singularly incompetent not to have seen what happened.
With a magnificent irony, the Wimbledon authorities later blamed 'human error' for the mistake. Apparently the machinery had been inappropriately switched off. But that is not the point. If you rely on machines instead of humanity, if you surrender to 'Skynet' as they did in the days of Terminator, you are inevitably prone to malfunction.
Besides, the fact is, human error is an integral part of sport. Jeopardy is a central tenet to our enjoyment. Part of the attraction of Rory McIlroy is because he fluffs his chances. Centre Court is in a growing love affair with Carlos Alcaraz partly because he makes mistakes. He is human, not a machine.
Just as VAR is sucking the joy from football in the vain attempt to eliminate error, what is happening across Wimbledon right now is final proof that technology is no saviour. Let's hope this fortnight marks the end of the experiment and next year we see the line judges properly restored to their position, crouching behind the baseline. Because the result from Wimbledon is clear: Humans 1 Machines 0.