Wimbledon’s electronic line-calling system faces heavy backlash after early glitches
Wimbledon’s switch to electronic line-calling (ELC) at the Championships has sparked a major uproar. The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) rolled out fully automated ball-tracking tech, ditching around 300 human line judges. The move was met with skepticism, but the opening week has seen intense criticism instead.
The issue started with top British players Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu publicly calling out questionable calls against them. Raducanu said the system’s errors were “kind of disappointing” and “very wrong” in matches she played. 
Wimbledon uses Hawk-Eye’s ELC system, which tracks the ball with 10 cameras placed around the court. Hawk-Eye claims a 2.2mm error margin and long used ELC only for challenges. This year it replaced all line judges—a first for the tournament.
Then came a major failure Sunday on Centre Court. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova’s opponent hit a clear out-of-bounds shot, but no call came. It was revealed that some cameras on Pavlyuchenkova’s side had been deactivated by accident during the game.
The umpire, Nico Helwerth, decided to replay the point after a 10-minute delay. Pavlyuchenkova called the situation “stolen” but still won the match.
AELTC confirmed the glitch was operator error. CEO Sally Bolton held a media meeting Monday blaming the human mistake but said protocols were fixed and the system is otherwise accurate.
Sally Bolton stated:
“The mistake was purely down to human error.”
“The protocols have been changed to prevent a similar issue.”
“ELC has otherwise been working accurately during the tournament.”
The controversy highlights risks of relying fully on tech in tennis. Player trust in the system has dipped sharply after shaky moments during clay-court seasons and now the Wimbledon debut.
Wimbledon’s experiment with AI-enhanced ELC is far from smooth. As the tourney heads into later rounds, all eyes are on whether faith in the system can recover.
Read more on the incident: Wimbledon line-call failure came after operator turned cameras off by mistake
