Wimbledon’s AI Line Judges Failure Nearly Stole Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova’s Wimbledon Win

You’d think by now, in the year of smart fridges and AI boyfriends, tennis line calls would be sorted. But at Wimbledon this week, technology dropped the ball – quite literally. In a Centre Court match between Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Sonay Kartal, the fancy new electronic line-calling system (ELC) was accidentally switched off. Yep, in the middle of play. Not exactly the tech flex Wimbledon was hoping for.

The drama unfolded when a ball from Kartal clearly sailed beyond the baseline, yet no call came. With the tech asleep on the job, it fell to umpire Nico Helwerth to make the call – and, unfortunately, he ruled the point should be replayed. Pavlyuchenkova was less than impressed, saying post-match: “Because she is local, they can say whatever. You took the game away from me,” as quoted by Sky Sports. Ouch.

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Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. Image @nastia_pav
via IG

Turns out, this whole debacle was the result of human error. The All England Lawn Tennis Club later admitted someone had accidentally deactivated the Hawk-Eye system on one side of the court. In a statement to Sky Sports, they confirmed, “Following our review, we have removed the ability for Hawk-Eye operators to manually deactivate the ball tracking. While the source of the issue was human error, this error cannot now be repeated due to the system changes we have made.”

Translation: no one’s allowed to accidentally hit the ‘off’ button again.

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Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova enjoying her birthday at Wimbledon. Image @nastia_pav
via IG

While the chair umpire did eventually stop the match and consult the review official, the damage – both emotional and technological – was done. Pavlyuchenkova later told Sky Sports: “It was very confusing in the beginning because the ball looked very long to me… I think we are losing a little bit of the charm of actually having human beings. Like during Covid, we didn’t have ball boys. It just becomes a little bit weird and sort of robot orientated.”

Even Wimbledon chief executive Sally Bolton admitted the whole thing was a PR disaster. “We’re deeply disappointed that this has happened in the Championships. It was a human error. The ball-tracking technology is working effectively,” she said during a press briefing, according to Sky Sports.

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Meanwhile, Kartal played it cool, telling Sky Sports, “That situation is a rarity. I think the fairest way was what [the umpire] did, to replay the point.”

Pavlyuchenkova regrouped to win 7-6 (7-3) 6-4, but it’s safe to say the tech still needs fine-tuning. Because if robots are taking our jobs, the least they can do is get the score right.