A new participant has taken center court at major tennis tournaments: Hawkeye, a tracking system that sees whether a ball lands inside, outside or partly on a line.

Hawkeye’s 10 video cameras feed 24 gigabytes of data to video-processing software that tracks the real-time position of every serve and shot. Television broadcasters began using the system in 2002 to enhance commentary. In March 2006 the NASDAQ-100 Open became the first tournament on the professional circuit to allow players to challenge an umpire’s line call, with the final decision settled by a review official after consulting Hawkeye.

This article was originally published with the title In or Out?.

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