Emma Raducanu is adamant that the Electronic Line Calling (ELC) system brought in to replace line judges at this year’s Wimbledon Championships was ‘very wrong’ numerous times on her run to the third round. Jack Draper and Carlos Alcaraz have also been skeptical about the system’s reliability in the first year Wimbledon bosses have strayed away from tradition.
Raducanu queried a line call with the chair umpire midway through the first set of her defeat to Aryna Sabalenka on Friday. And that wasn’t the only decision the Brit felt was clearly incorrect during one of her matches since arriving at the All England Club.
“Yeah, I mean, that call [against Sabalenka] was, like, for sure out,” a bleary-eyed Raducanu said in her post-match press conference. “It’s kind of disappointing, the tournament here, that the calls can be so wrong.
“For the most part they’ve been okay. It’s just, like, I’ve had a few in my other matches, too, that have been very wrong. So yeah, I don’t know. Hopefully they can kind of fix that.”
Draper also felt that the system ran into some issues during his second-round defeat to Marin Cilic. The British men’s No.1 said: “I don’t think it’s 100 per cent accurate, in all honesty. A couple of the ones today, it showed a mark on the court. There’s no way the chalk would have showed.”
And world No.2 Alcaraz joined the growing group of players to raise serious questions about the ELC’s reliability, telling the umpire during his third-round win over Jan-Lennard Struff: “I’m not sure about it. I would have asked for a challenge. It’s not the first time I’ve seen the machine… it’s not the first time. I’m not sure about some calls.”
On Friday, Wimbledon tournament director Jamie Baker spoke out in defence of the system. “The concept of live line calling is absolutely standard across the tour now,” he said. “Two of the other grand slams have had it for four or five years.
“The accuracy and the reliability and the robustness of the system and the process as a whole, in terms of officiating, is in as good a place as it has been for tennis.”
Raducanu’s complaints came after a courageous defeat to top seed Sabalenka on Friday night. The 22-year-old had chances to take control of the match in the first and second sets but spurned them on both occasions, with Sabalenka coming through a 7-6 6-4 winner.