It’s the perfect Wimbledon. The sun is out, the Brits are firing and as for the scoring, that too will be somewhat perfect, this being the first Wimbledon since the tournament told the line judges, long the arbiters of accuracy, that after 148 years, their services will no longer be required.
Arguments, unpredictability and, as the cameras zoom in to the line judge whose eyesight judgment prompts a participant explosion, buttock-clenching awkwardness in close-up: goodbye to all that. Hello, AI and sharp-eyed robots, analysing in real time 18 lots of footage.
It’s perfect now, but is it progress? After the first day, players complained that while the calls were perfect in their accuracy, they were imperfect in that the gizmo’s volume was set too low and they could not hear the verdicts.
To some extent, Wimbledon is falling into line – both the Australian and US Opens, and very many of the lesser professional tournaments, have waved goodbye to the humans and embraced electronic line calling. The players wanted it. They strive truly, madly and deeply for perfection; their short, explosive careers cannot hinge on the human fallibility of others.
But look at Centre Court without the sentries posted around the border, and without the quiet ceremony that has always marked the departure of one set of line judges and the arrival of another. One day their absence will feel natural and maybe we’ll forget they were ever there, barking their assessments. But for now, their absence feels like a loss. Game, set and match to the gizmos.
Of the grand slams, the premier tournaments of world tennis, only the French Open has resisted the temptation to shoo away the line judges and embrace electronica, and you may think therein lies a morality tale of sorts. When the Wimbledon plan was mooted, one experienced line judge there spoke not just of the hurt of being abruptly discarded but also of her worry that line judges, drawn from clubs around the country, were a crucial link between the elite game, with its Wimbledon showpiece, and the grassroots, which has perennially felt neglected. They saw being asked to participate at Wimbledon as a reason to stay connected, a kind of lodestar. “I worry that smaller tournaments will struggle to find line judges soon,” she said.
At the French Open this year, French Tennis Federation president Gilles Moretton was asked why it remains loth to regulate battle on the red clay with technology and cleaves to its line judges.
He thought the gizmos were not quite perfect, citing a 10% error rate. He said never say never, but primarily he said: “We need those people working all year long in our tournaments, promoting tennis in small clubs, being there for club matches. If we stop having those linesmen, those referees, we feel that is not too good for tennis in France maybe, and I think it may be the same in other countries.”
Perhaps Wimbledon is right – in lockstep with inevitability and history’s sweep – but it’s worth taking a moment to think about the value and cost of perfection.
Talk to a football fan about VAR. The video assistant referee system was designed to help match officials make perfect decisions but has instead robbed too many games of flow, joy and spontaneity. Do I want glaring mistakes to stand? No. Do I want a brilliant goal disallowed because the gizmo picked up an attacker’s elbow tip rendering them offside? No, I don’t want that either. Do I want to wait five minutes to celebrate a goal while the gizmo and its handlers, pursuing their perfection, deliberate? No, I really don’t. Do I want my team to lose because the referee made an error? No, of course not, but I also think that human fallibility is what makes it a flesh-and-blood endeavour.
As the technological possibilities increase, with an AI model for everything now, we are going to have to face and answer some hard questions about whether we want perfect (or just good enough) and/or whether we prize humans. Of course there will be a need for both, but if we leave big tech and commerce to make those decisions, the society of the future may not be calibrated the way we’d like.
I’m no luddite. Machines and tech do some things better. But humans are human. They smile at you at the supermarket checkout, can out-banter any bot at the bank or the hardware store and they added to the spectacle that is Wimbledon. They’re not perfect, but I will always miss them when they’ve gone.
