The professional tennis tour has announced human line judges will be phased out completely from the 2025 season.
The Association of Tennis Professionals, the governing body of the pro tennis circuit, has confirmed the change, which will “optimise accuracy and consistency.”
Several of the events already rely on the technology, including the US Open and Australian Open major tournaments. At Wimbledon there’s Hawk-Eye tech for challenges, but the French Open still relies on umpires looking at the chalk marks on the clay to tell if the ball has hit the line or not.
The latter two tournaments will still maintain that right, and may choose to the stick with the tradition of having humans calling the old in-out.
“This is a landmark moment for our sport, and not one we’ve reached without careful consideration,” Andrea Gaudenzi,” the ATP chairman, said in a statement.
“Tradition is core to tennis and line judges have played an important part in the game over the years.That said, we have a responsibility to embrace innovation and new technologies.”
It’s a bit of a bummer for the professionals who tour on the circuit and it’s unclear whether they will still have a major roll to play moving forward. At least the fellas among the line crew won’t have to worry as much about being blasted in the cajones by 130 mile-per-hour serves, eh?
The press release added: “All-court ELC Live coverage will also deliver comprehensive player and ball tracking across the whole Tour, leading to an unprecedented level of data for player-performance analysis and the development of new statistics in the game in collaboration with Tennis Data Innovations (TDI), in addition to future commercialisation opportunities.”
Are you in favour of this change? One suspects a certain Mr. John McEnroe, who made a career out of berating said line judges might be on board. Share your thoughts with us @trustedreviews on Twitter.