Hawk-Eye: The Best Thing to Hit Tennis Since the Tennis Shoe?

The Luddites and traditionalists assured us the sky would be falling. Long before Hawk-Eye � the new electronic line calling system � took hold at the Nasdaq-100 Open in Miami, cautionary voices offered shrill warnings.

“I’m totally against it,� Marat Safin insisted. “It will destroy the game. It will slow it down. [We’ll] lose momentum and the motion of the game. Who was the genius who came up with this stupid idea? They’re looking for solutions on how to save the game, and this is not it.�
Roger Federer was hardly more upbeat. “What is happening is madness...a pure waste of money,� he said. “I hope I play on an outside court so I don’t have to face it.�

And once Hawk-Eye got rolling, there were many another opinions. Amelie Mauresmo thought the system was too slow. Tim Henman insisted it was too fast. “We’re in the entertainment business,� he contended. “We’ve got to milk it a bit more on the big screen. In cricket...you’re made to wait.� But when all was said and done, Hawk-Eye proved that tennis could actually implement a major on-court change and leave the era of lanterns and pitchforks behind without catastrophic effect.

“It’s fantastic,� Martina Navratilova said. “Where was it 20 years ago?�

“It’s the best thing to come to tennis since the tennis shoe,� contended writer Norm Chad.

“All I can say is go out and hug a ref,� cheered Mary Carillo.

After all, the inspired brainchild of Aussie Paul Hawkins - a 31-year-old ex-cricket player with a PhD in artificial intelligence - proved that the refs got it right 66 percent of the time, or 108 out of the 161 challenges, on those usually tight calls.

“We were humbled a bit,� admitted James Blake. “A lot of us need that, so maybe we’ll stop arguing...Maybe we’ll realize that the linespeople are getting it right.�

Hawk-Eye � which uses 10 cameras and costs about $100,000 per court � may be well worth the dough. It brought good ol’ justice to the game, was decisive, and put players’ and fans’ minds to rest. It was fast, especially compared with the NFL’s low, arcane peep-show system, and it actually sped up the game. Plus, it clearly drew fans in, as cries of “challenge, challenge� echoed through the stadium.

“The good thing about [Hawk-Eye],� noted Andy Roddick, “is that now they have to be accountable for something, which used to drive me up the wall, because they could make a decision and not really care. At least now, they look stupid in front of 15,000 people if they make the wrong call. That’s more fun, right?�

Of course, despite all its success, there are already many emphatic suggestions for mid-course corrections for what has been called the most sophisticated piece of technology in sports.

• Some have asked, why not penalize players if their challenges fail? (Sure would be intriguing.)
• Others ask, why not allow players unlimited challenges? (Sure would be just.)
• Already, tactical questions have emerged. Should players challenge early in a set or hold on to their two challenges for key moments later in the set?
• Does the system give unfair advantage to top players who’ll more quickly pick up on the tactical nuances of the challenge system since they play more often on the show courts that have Hawk-Eye?
• What’s going to happen in a big match when a player who’s out of challenges won’t be able to contest an obviously bad call on a critical point? (Remember hapless Serena against Capriati at the ‘04 U.S. Open?)
• Is Hawk-Eye the end of the traditional overrule? (Why even bother?)
• Does the technology, despite loud disclaimers, mark the beginning of the end for human linesmen?

After a brilliant debut filled with accolades, Hawk-Eye will be sidelined for the clay- and grass-court seasons, only to reemerge for the U.S. Open Series and for what promises to be a spicy run at the U.S. Open. Until then, there will be many philosophical debates. Does Hawk-Eye compromise the spirit and soul of the game? Worse yet, would tossing it away, now that it’s performed so well, be like un-inventing the wheel?

Norm Chad made it seem like Hawk-Eye was a godsend worthy of a Nobel Prize. “Our children,� he exuded, “and our children’s children, and generations of children until the end of time, can be better ensured that a bad line call does not affect the outcome of a critical match.�

But then Chad put the matter in a big-picture perspective and admitted, “To me, it was always crazy that we need to tell whether a tennis ball is in or out with 100 percent certainty. Seriously, if we spent a little less energy on this issue and a little more on, say, the growing hole in the ozone layer, then maybe tennis brats on the planet Earth still will be able to complain about bad calls in the 25th century.�

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