'Sad': Former Wimbledon line judge on tech replacing humans

As Wimbledon faces further embarrassment about electronic line-calling woes, a former line judge at the All England Club says it’s "sad" that there are no longer people making the calls on court.

It blamed “human error” for a mistake by the electronic system, which replaced human line judges this year at Wimbledon.

The technology was "inadvertently deactivated" by someone for three points at Centre Court during Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova's three-set victory over Sonay Kartal in the fourth round.

On one point, a shot by Kartal clearly landed past the baseline but wasn't called out by the automated setup — called Hawk-Eye — because it had been shut off.

The latest error – a malfunction mid-point during Taylor Fritz's quarter-final – was greeted by boos in the crowd.

Former line judge Pauline Eyre told Breakfast that getting rid of line judges for the first time in nearly 150 years just didn't feel right.

"Funny, isn't it? Because it still needs to be controlled by people, and people are fallible."

"It looks really strange, when you look at the screen or court it looks like we’ve been Photoshopped out."

Pavlyuchenkova also hit out at the electronic system earlier this week.

"It's such a big match, big event," she said. "Since we have already automatic line-calling and so much invested into this, we should probably look into something else to have better decisions."

"I think it's really sad," Eyre said.

"Mostly, because the traditions are lovely – I didn’t always agree with them – but some of them are great."

She also has concerns about where the next generation of chair umpires will come from.

"I spent the beginning of my career calling lines at local clubs. That’s how we cut our teeth and how we learned how to do the job. Where will that be in the future?"

- Additional reporting by Associated Press