From love all to break point: Has Wimbledon jumped a bit early to end game’s tradition?

First it was the Middle Sunday, then it was the line judges.

Suddenly, Wimbledon seemed to be joining the rest of the world in breaking tradition and gravitating towards technology.

Back in 2022, the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) decided to do away with the Middle Sunday break, reversing nearly 145 years of tradition. Previously, since the Grand Slam began in 1877, Middle Sunday only saw action on four occasions, in 1991, 1997, 2004 and 2016, and all due to wet weather playing havoc with the regular schedule. Explaining the call, the AELTC said that advances in grass technology had led to improved courts and so there was no need for a rest day.

Of course, there would still be the all-white rule, strawberries and cream and Henman Hill.

But, this year, in another break with tradition, Wimbledon decided to dispense with the line judges!

If you are a tennis aficionado and follow the game closely, you will have noticed that the Australian Open and the US Open too have begun to rely on electronic line calling, having done away with line judges on the court. Only the French Open has resisted the temptation to banish humans from making calls.

At Roland Garros earlier this year, French Tennis Federation President Gilles Moretton, when asked why he was averse to the change, cited a 10 per cent error rate in the gadgets that still needed to be rectified before being put to use.

Maybe, he was right and Wimbledon should have waited.

On what was ironically the Middle Sunday, during the fourth-round match between Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and local hope Sonay Kartal, the electronic line calling system malfunctioned. After an investigation, organisers admitted the technology was turned off in error on a section of the court for a game, with the mistake only becoming apparent when a shot from Kartal that clearly missed the baseline was not called out.

Had the call been correct, it would have given Pavlyuchenkova a 5-4 lead in the first set, but instead umpire Nico Helwerth ruled the point should be replayed, with Kartal going on to win the game.

The Russian accused the official of home bias, saying: “Because she is local, they can say whatever. You took the game away from me.”

Wimbledon issued a statement on Sunday saying the system had been “deactivated in error” for one game by those operating the system and blamed “human error” for the embarrassing failure of the electronic line-calling system. “In that time, there were three calls not picked up by live ELC on the affected part of the court. Two of these were called by the chair umpire, who was not made aware that the system had been deactivated,” it said.

The glitch in Sunday’s fourth-round match follows concerns raised by other players about the technology, including British stars Emma Raducanu and Jack Draper.

With everything around the world being dictated by AI these days, the shift was perhaps inevitable. But for purists of the game, a Centre Court match without the line judges around the border and without the ceremony marking the departure of one set and arrival of another on the hallowed turf will feel a tad hollow.

Maybe we need to ask ourselves: Do we need AI and bots to give us metronomic accuracy or do we prefer the human touch, flawed but animated and visible.

Some fans made it very clear on the first day of the tournament, brandishing placards saying: “DON’T LET BOTS CALL THE SHOTS” and GAME, SET, MATCH AI”. After the first day, players even complained that while the calls were accurate, the volume of the devices was set too low and they could not hear the calls. Another unforced human error, the harbingers of AI revolution said.

Before this year, Wimbledon’s pool of line judges was around 300. Currently, only 80 of them are employed as match assistants, with two on each court offering support to the umpire.

Those line judges traditionally wore a uniform of white trousers, a navy and white striped shirt and a navy jacket. This year, though, the courts they used to line up on wear an empty look.