- Sonay Kartal was able to replay crucial point due to failure of technology
- Hawk-eye blunder is still throwing up more questions than answers
- Players have little trust in system, with Belinda Bencic latest to speak out
Almost 24 hours on from the mysterious ‘deactivation’ of an electronic camera system, which has replaced those venerable Wimbledon line judges who sat courtside for so many years, some light was finally shed on the controversy.
With no meaningful information forthcoming, we had wondered if someone sat on an on/off button. Or brushed past and accidentally flicked it within the cramped confines of a booth where the system is administered.
It turns out that a ‘checked’ box on a screen, activating the system, had been inadvertently ‘unchecked’ on Sunday.
That left a backhand from Britain’s Sonay Kartal to sail out with no call forthcoming at a crucial moment against Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, eliciting calls of conspiracy from the aggrieved party, and the point having to be replayed.
They are such small margins with this new technology. A system of justice is contingent on the click of a Hawk-Eye operator’s mouse.
Wimbledon tell us that action has been taken and there will be no manual override for ball tracking from now on. But the fog took a long time to clear.
The line-calling system is not the only one to have suffered a communication breakdown over the past few days.
When All England Club chief executive Sally Bolton sat down for a media discussion on Monday, she repeatedly declared herself unaware why the system had been switched off mid-match, rather than between matches.
There was no disclosure about boxes being unchecked, nothing to dispel the idea of a big red button and no requirement to furnish us with any such details, she insisted.
But this was the most obvious question, it was put to her during a conversation which became rather heated. ‘That’s a pertinent question for us in terms of ensuring it doesn’t happen again, yes,’ she replied. ‘I’m not sure it matters greatly exactly how it happened.’
It was a remarkable observation, given that this system requires every ounce of credibility — and transparency — it can muster, during a tournament in which Emma Raducanu has called it ‘dodgy’ and Jack Draper has also voiced his doubts.
The All England Club insist humans were at fault and the match review official, working alongside a Hawk-Eye technical official, could have told chair umpire Nico Helwerth the system had been accidentally switched off.
But if that official had known, could he not have simply rechecked the on/off box? And why did at least three points play out without technology before Helwerth was informed? Still, more questions than answers.
Helwerth was not assigned a match at Wimbledon yesterday, his first day off at this tournament. Officials said he had not been demoted and was not at fault.
Perhaps, when he rematerialises, the German will tell us why, after the machines failed him, he felt unable to call Kartal’s volley out, as he was entitled to do.
Bolton says she suspected he had not seen the ball drop a foot out of play. Pavlyuchenkova says Helwerth told her he knew it was out.
For once, the All England Club will be counting themselves lucky the British player did not win. There would have been hell to pay from the articulate and opinionated Russian.
Doubts about the system persisted on Monday night. After winning her last-16 match, Swiss player Belinda Bencic said: ‘I don’t trust it. I don’t want to talk about it too much, but it’s really stressful.
‘Sometimes you see a ball that’s out. You want to stop playing, but now I’m reminding myself to just play every ball.’
