Wimbledon’s response after ‘they stole a game’ from Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova believes the chair umpire should be more proactive when it comes to contentious electronic line calling following a shocking mistake during her Wimbledon clash against Sonay Kartal.
The controversial moment took place at 4-4 in the opening set when one of Kartal’s shots went wide, but there was no “out” call even though TV replays also confirmed that the ball was well wide.
Chair umpire Nico Helwerth admitted to the players that he saw that the ball went long and delayed the restart of the game as he told the crowd: “We’re just going to check if the system was up and running, because there was no audio call.”
The official then confirmed the electronic system “was unfortunately unable to track the last point”, but instead of giving the point to Pavlyuchenkova, the point had to be replayed, much to the dismay of the Russian.
“Because she’s local, they can say whatever. You took the game away from me. They stole a game from me. They stole it,” she raged at Helwerth.
The All England Club has since issued a response, but insists it still has “full confidence” in electronic line calling despite several concerns from players.
“We have apologised to the players involved,” a spokesperson told BBC Sport
“We continue to have full confidence in the accuracy of the ball-tracking technology.
“In this instance, there was a human error and as a consequence we have fully reviewed our processes and made the appropriate changes.”
The likes of Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu have in recent days also raised concerns about the system while 2017 French Open winner Jelena Ostapenko has long been a big critic.
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Initially, people were curious about her behaviour and questioning of the system, but many are starting to come around, including Pavlyuchenkova.
“You can ask Jelena Ostapenko, she’s fighting with the electronic calls,” the world No 50 said. “At the beginning it was funny, but then after I was getting her point a little bit. Sometimes when we play, I don’t know, I’m thinking, Am I crazy, or I just feel like the ball is long? Then nothing is happening. There is no automatic line calling.
“Then I was thinking of Jelena many times because I’m like, Okay, maybe she’s right. I’ve seen couple of matches in Miami, I think, Kasatkina and Cirstea, something happened where literally the ball was this out in the corridor of the court. There was no call of the automatic line calling.
“Again, the chair umpire was so confused. I think they just need to – chair umpire needs to maybe have a clear plan if that happens, okay, what I’m going to do in this situation. I think they a little bit lost. They start calling everybody. They don’t know what to do, instead of maybe have clear decision, right?
“If the system is down, then I’m going to take initiative and call this maybe. We probably should have this system like in football to review.”
Pavlyuchenkova confirmed that Wimbledon officials explained the “human error”, but says it’s a topic that won’t go away.
“I think it’s good to raise this subject for the future because if anything like that happens in the very important moment of the match,” she said.
“I think we should have a wire system like in football they have or something, so then it’s clear for everybody and we can move on right away instead of just guessing. It could sit with me for the rest of the match and then kind of unknown, was it in or out and kind of feeling that it was my game.
“But luckily, I moved on fast from that moment.”
