Headlines shouting about VAR arriving at Wimbledon might look like they are about accuracy or a brave new world, but there’s a bigger trend if you look deeper. Let’s face it, aside from a couple of teething issues with new tech last year, tennis has demonstrated a big commitment, over many years, to embracing tech to make the game fairer without overwhelming the match.
Changes have been introduced regularly while the umpire – and the technology that supports them – have been kept both visible and audible. The upshot is that tennis has quietly boiled the frog; line judges have gone; reviews have expanded; challenges have become audience participation. The shift hasn’t been dramatic, but the cumulative effect is that more of the decision making now sits within systems rather than people.
Arguably, with VAR, Football rushed in and has spent the subsequent years unpicking its early mistake. The technology itself was rarely the issue; the friction came from how it sat alongside human judgement and the fact that many decisions in football are inherently subjective. A ref would make a call which, if challenged, would be scrutinized by a separate team. They would review the decision, return a verdict which the official then had to report back. A process that does little to help their gravitas in a sport where referees don’t always see the most cordial side of players.
In tennis, the review system will mean that players can’t challenge everything and the umpire is given the tools to inform their call, even if the outcome is increasingly shaped by what the system reveals. This means players are asking the person to review their own decision based on better information and longer to consider.
The Kartal incident last year, where the officiating tech was accidentally switched off, is something everyone wants to avoid. The error was deeply unfortunate and the lack of player recourse felt massively unjust, not simply because an error occurred, but because there was no clear mechanism to challenge the system that had made it. Sports fans – and athletes – can stomach most things if they are fair but get reasonably outraged when they are not.
Wimbledon’s response is good and reflects its long-standing, impressive relationship with technology. They don’t step back but strive to improve and make the system even tighter. That is the direction of travel across sport among the smarter sports rights holders.
Results are everything in sport and vital to the next era are the brands who build, own and govern the systems that clarify officials’ decisions. As the tech trend deepens, the logical end point is that it won’t be the umpire but the system that decides whether the call stands. Once the system becomes the arbiter, the person in the chair is no longer the authority but simply the face of it.
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