Wimbledon malfunction angers Taylor Fritz as umpire forced to make emergency call | Tennis | Sport

Taylor Fritz didn’t look impressed after a rally during his Wimbledon quarter-final against Karen Khachanov was interrupted by the Electronic Line Calling system accidentally shouting “fault” in another embarrassing blunder. The incident on Court 1 came during the first game of the fourth set, at which point Fritz was leading 6-3, 6-4, 1-6. As Khachanov prepared to hit a forehand, the latest ELC fault saw the system loudly – and incorrectly – announce a fault which forced the umpire to pause play.

Fritz had just missed the centre line at 15-0 with his first serve and was correctly called for a “fault”. But his second serve landed in the service box and led to a three-shot rally before the error. “What was that?” BBC commentator Todd Woodbridge said after the incorrect call, with the co-commentator John Lloyd chiming in: “The electronic line system has jumped the gun because that serve wasn’t 121mph, that was the second serve.” The chair umpire then had to make an emergency phone call to reset the system.

The BBC cameras showed Fritz looking visibly frustrated after the delay as the umpire announced to the crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen, we will replay the last point due to a malfunction. The system is now working.”

Khachanov won the replayed point and broke Fritz’s serve to take a 1-0 lead at the start of the fourth set. But Fritz went on to secure victory in a tiebreak to reach the semi-finals, where he will face either Carlos Alcaraz or Cameron Norrie.

The malfunction comes after an awkward incident during Sonay Kartal’s loss to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Sunday. The ELC technology failed to call a Kartal shot out on game point, despite it visibly being well beyond the baseline.

The point would have handed the Russian a 5-4 lead in the first set. But it had to be replayed and Kartal broke her opponent’s serve as a result.

The incident left Pavlyuchenkova furious although she battled back to win the set, and the match. But at the time she fumed to the umpire: “Because she is local, they can say whatever. You took the game away from me. They stole the game from me, they stole it.”

Wimbledon later confirmed that they had made changes to their Hawk-Eye system and following an investigation, admitted the technology had been turned off in error on a section of the court for that game.

“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,” they said.

“It is now clear that the live ELC system, which was working optimally, was deactivated in error on part of the server’s side of the court for one game by those operating the 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.

“Following the third, the chair umpire stopped the match and consulted with the review official. It was determined that the point should be replayed. The chair umpire followed the established process. We have apologised to the players involved.”

Speaking in her post-match press conference, a frustrated Pavlyuchenkova elaborated: “It was very confusing in the beginning because the ball looked very long to me. It was a very crucial moment in the match. I expected a different decision. I just thought also the chair umpire could take the initiative.

“That’s why he’s there sitting on the chair. He also saw it out, he told me after the match. I don’t know if it’s something to do because she’s local.

“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.

“They’re very good at giving fines, though, and code violations. This they don’t miss because every time any little thing, they are just right there on it. I would prefer they looked at the lines and call the errors better.”