Tennis has chosen electronics, since 2025 goodbye to chair judges

The infallible one, with hands stretched forward or spread out to the side to signal the out. The one aged and asleep, or austere and hieratic under the Sikh headdress, in the inevitable “colour” photos from Wimbledon. The overweight and a bit slow moving one, in the shots from Flushing Meadows. And those – many – targeted by McEnroe and Nastase, by Fognini and Kyrgios, for a puff of chalk or an unclear sign: “You cannot be serious!”.

For a century and a half the line judges, heroic volunteers with a very solid vocation and contemptuous of danger – you will remember the fury of Serena Williams against the poor Japanese referee in the New York final lost to Naomi Osaka: «I’ll make you swallow that ball!». .-, from more or less impeccable sentries of the boundaries of the field have been an integral part of the tennis tour company. But their fate is now sealed: from 2025 they will be definitively and completely replaced by the ELC, the Electronic Line Calling, the system of electronic “calls” introduced for the first time in 2017 at the ATP Next Gen Finals and which due to the pandemic , with its inevitable and heavy restrictions on contacts and attendance, has now largely taken hold.

“It is a historic step for our sport”, commented the president of the ATP Andrea Gaudenzi, who aims to unify tennis and therefore has also invested in a type of technology designed specifically to make playing conditions uniform in all tournaments. “We got there after long reflections. Tradition is at the heart of tennis and chair umpires have played an important role throughout history. But we also have a duty to adapt to new technologies, and tennis deserves the most accurate system of refereeing possible».

Since 2006, tennis had already adopted Hawk Eye technology, the famous ‘Hawkeye’, precisely to remedy some glaring cases of referee errors (and Serena was always involved). ELC is a step forward, no longer a simple control and correction of other people’s calls but an integrated system with an electronic voice that screams ‘out’, replacing the human one.

A technology that makes (almost) everyone agree, eliminates human error – who knows if even electronic error… – and avoids discussions. John McEnroe in his day even had the courage to quarrel with the first ancestor of the ELC, the famous ‘cyclops’ («this machine knows who I am!»), But he has left no heirs capable of conceiving such dialogues. The step towards automation also reduces the role of the chair umpire, who without being able to change calls with the “overrule” is increasingly turning into a notary, for someone into an accountant, and thus tennis loses a piece of its its roots, and of its humanity.

But it’s the technology, beauties. Whether we like it or not.