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 year all Grand Slam and Masters tournaments not played on clay are using this arrangement. Each player is allowed two challenges per set of play. Some stadiums show a computer-generated replay from Hawkeye during an umpire’s review, engaging the crowd. Thus far Hawkeye has overturned 33 to 40 percent of challenged calls, according to Paul Hawkins, who invented the system and founded Hawkeye Innovations in Winchester, England.
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Hawkins, an engineer with a doctorate in artificial intelligence who specializes in visual processing, first developed the system for cricket. TV commentators use it to analyze pitches toward the batsman. But cricket organizations have not adopted the system for challenges. “It’s a cultural issue,” Hawkins says, adding that Major League Baseball also has not shown interest because a home-plate umpire’s calling of balls and strikes is so central to the game.
Many top tennis players say they like Hawkeye because it makes calls more accurate. Umpires say it takes a little pressure off them as serves and other shots get faster and faster. Fans seem to like the drama that challenges create. Setup and operation of Hawkeye can run from $40,000 to $50,000 a week per court, but stadium owners are attracting companies such as Canon and Sony to sponsor the amenity.
With a few adjustments, Hawkeye could call every shot live, eliminating line umpires altogether by sounding a tone when a ball lands out of bounds. “But no one is asking for that because they are concerned it would make the game too sterile,” Hawkins says. “As a sports fan, I would have to say it would be bad for the game. At the moment, we have a nice balance between the human and the technical.”