All England Club faces heat after Wimbledon’s AI line-calling tech was switched off mid-match Sunday. The glitch came during Britain’s Sonay Kartal clash with Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. An obvious out ball from Kartal was not called, causing chaos and confusion.
The club confirmed the system was accidentally turned off during the whole game segment, resulting in three missed calls. CEO Sally Bolton admitted an official “had not been doing their job properly” and blamed German umpire Nico Helwerth. She claimed Helwerth was unaware the tech had deactivated and made some calls manually before stopping play on the third missed call.
Bolton refused to say exactly how the system was disabled, only that it should only ever switch off between matches. The tech depends on humans activating and monitoring it. 
“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,” Bolton said.
Review officials also dropped the ball. They failed to alert Helwerth that the system was down, leaving the chair umpire without crucial info.
“If the [review official] had been doing their job effectively, then the chair umpire would have had the relevant information with which to make the decision.”
Despite the uproar, Bolton said there will be no public breakdown or broader review of the electronic line calling system. She insisted changes have been made “to ensure that we won’t have the same situation again.”
Helwerth was left off Monday’s matches but reportedly was not punished – just given a day off.
Watch the clip on Twitter where Pavlyuchenkova reacts to the replayed point
