Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova said a game was ‘stolen’ from her when Wimbledon’s electronic line-calling system failed during her fourth-round match against Britain’s Sonay Kartal.
There was no ‘out’ call when a Kartal backhand went long at 4-4 in the first set, with chair umpire Nico Helwerth shouting “stop, stop” to halt play.
Russian Pavlyuchenkova had seen the ball was out – and a TV replay showed that was the case by some distance.
Addressing the crowd, Helwerth said: “We’re just going to check if the system was up and running, because there was no audio call.”
After a telephone call, he said the electronic system “was unfortunately unable to track the last point so we will replay the point”.
Had the ball been called out, Pavlyuchenkova would have won the point and taken the lead.
Instead, it was replayed, Kartal won the point and went on to break for a 5-4 lead.
