WIMBLEDON — Umpire Nico Helwerth will not officiate at Wimbledon on Monday the day after he was at the centre of a line-calling storm on Centre Court.
Helwerth has officiated nine matches at Wimbledon in the last seven days but was left off the rota for so-called “Magic Monday”, when eight last-16 matches will be played in the singles.
Wimbledon sources claim this is normal practice and that Helwerth will be back on duty later in the week.
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And All England Club chief executive Sally Bolton did admit that the umpire had been let down by the systems in place.
“The chair umpire was in communication with the review official and was not being informed that the system had been partially deactivated,” Bolton said.
“So the chair umpire was not operating with perhaps a full set of information while he’s trying to make those decisions.”
The German, who has been in the chair for three grand slam finals, ordered Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Sonay Kartal to replay a crucial point at 4-4 in the first set after the automated electronic line-calling (ELC) system was inadvertently switched off.
Wimbledon officials have confirmed that protocols would have allowed Helwerth to call the ball out himself, but he chose to call a let instead.
Video replays showed the ball, hit by Kartal, was clearly out and Pavlyuchenkova would have won the game had ELC not been accidentally switched off.
Slow-motion replays showed the ball was several centimetres out (Photo: BBC)Instead, she lost the replayed point, and subsequently had her serve broken to trail 5-4 in the opener.
A furious Pavlyuchenkova claimed moments later that “they stole a game from me” and alleged it was because Kartal was receiving favourable treatment at her home slam.
She did however win the set and the match and rowed back from those comments in the aftermath, although she did still say the club needed to make changes to avoid a repeat.
“The chair umpire was so confused,” Pavlyuchenkova said.
“I think they just need to… chair umpire needs to maybe have a clear plan if that happens, ‘Okay, what I’m going to do in this situation’.
“I think they [are] a little bit lost. They start calling everybody. They don’t know what to do.
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“Instead [they should be able to say]: ‘if the system is down, then I’m going to take initiative and call this.’
“We probably should have this system like in football to review.”
The All England Club say the ELC system was “inadvertently” deactivated by one of the operators at “Ball Traffic Control”, the onsite hub for line-calling across the whole tournament, and the club “have made the appropriate changes that we needed to make” after a full review.
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