Wimbledon offer unusual explanation for ‘scary’ moment that forced umpire to halt match

Wimbledon blamed a ball boy for the latest fault in its automatic line-calling system.

The issue occured in the men’s quarter-final between Taylor Fritz and Karen Khachanov.

The umpire called a halt to the match – and said the technology ‘malfunctioned’Credit: BBCIn the first game of the fourth set, with American Fritz leading 2-1, the message ‘fault’ came over the loudspeaker system.

Both players looked bemused as this happened in the middle of a rally with the ball nowhere near the lines.

The umpire immediately called a halt to the proceedings to investigate the issue.

“What was that,” BBC commentator John Lloyd said.

Read more on WimbledonHis colleague said: “That was the electronic line calling system, it has jumped the gun.”

The umpire made a quick phone call to those behind the scenes to check if the automatic line calling system was up and running.

She then made an announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, we will replay the point because there was a malfunction with the line calling system.”

This led to a chorus of boos from the spectators inside Court One.

An All England Club spokesperson said it was the movement of a ball kid who had caused the issue.

A spokesperson said: “The player’s service motion began while the BBG was still crossing the net and therefore the system didn’t recognise the start of the point. As such the Chair Umpire instructed the point be replayed.”

Fritz and his opponent were bemused by the errorCredit: BBCFritz went on to win the match 6-3, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (4).

Asked for his reaction after the match, Khachanov said: “To be honest, I’m more for line umpires, to be honest. I don’t know. You feel a little bit court too big, too alone without line umpires.

“At the same time looks like AI and electronic line calls has to be very precise and no mistakes, but we’ve seen a couple. That’s questionable why this is happening. Is just like error of the machine or what’s the reason?

“Like today I think there were a few calls. I don’t know, very questionable if it’s really touching the line or not. At the same time during one point, the machine call it just out during the rally. Sometimes it’s scary to let machine do what they want, you know?

“Yeah, what can I do? I can argue, or I can be angry on it or just continue playing. It’s not in my power. It’s already happened. I need to kind of accept it, and that’s it.

“It was not kind of super important point. If it would happen on a break point or deuce or maybe tiebreaker, okay, you can get more mad. But it was just beginning of the set, 15-Love or Love-15. I don’t remember. It was maybe not that important moment. That’s why I stayed really focused and calm.”

Replays showed just how out the shot was in the fourth round matchCredit: BBCThe automatic line-calling system has come under huge scrutiny during Wimbledon.

Emma Raducanu and Jack Draper were among the many star names who questioned the reliability of the system after being convinced it had got several calls wrong.

Officials batted away concerns over the accuracy of the technology, before a controversial moment in Sonay Kartal’s fourth round match with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

A ball that was clearly out was not picked up by the line-calling system.

Officials blamed human error for the incident, with the system inadvertently turned off and not flagging that a shot from the British player was out.

Pavlyuchenkova, who would have moved 5-4 ahead, was furious with umpire Nico Helwerth for ordering the point to be replayed rather than making the call himself, accusing him of stealing the game and the tournament of home bias.

Wimbledon officials apologised to both players, and chief executive Sally Bolton said: “It was important for us to to explain as much as we could at that point in time what we believed had happened, and to apologise to the players for it happening in the first place.

“We’re deeply disappointed that this has happened in the Championships. It was a human error. The ball-tracking technology is working effectively.”

The system has replaced line judges for the first time this year and such a high-profile malfunction is hugely embarrassing for the All England Club.

Bolton refused to go into the details of how the error had happened, or to explain what safeguards had been put in place during a briefing with reporters on Monday morning.

“I wasn’t sat there, so I don’t know what happened,” she said. “It was clearly deactivated in error, because you wouldn’t ordinarily deactivate a set of cameras mid-match intentionally.

“Once this happened, we did a full review of all of our systems and processes to check all of those kinds of things and to make sure that, both historically and moving forward, we have made the appropriate changes that we needed to make. So we’re absolutely confident in the system.”

Read More on talkSPORTOrganisers later clarified the changes that have been made, with a spokesman saying: “Following our review, we have removed the ability for Hawk-Eye operators to manually deactivate the ball tracking. This error cannot now be repeated.”

With another malfunction to the system, more questions are sure to be asked.