[Wimbledon Center Court. Photo Credit to Pixabay]

For the first time in 147 years, artificial judges have replaced human linesmen at the 2025 Wimbledon Championships, introducing a controversial new era for tennis’s most prestigious tournament. 

Since the beginning of the Wimbledon Championships, human line judges have been present on court to make line calls, judging whether the ball was in bounds or out.

Now, for the first time in the tournament's storied history, line judges are no longer present on the court, leaving courts looking more open with fewer officials positioned around the playing area.

The new electronic system was developed by Hawk-Eye, the technology that was previously used for the now-defunct challenge system.

The program uses high-speed cameras placed around the court, along with AI analysis to determine whether the ball was in or out within milliseconds.

However, with these changes come complications. 

In the first round match between Carlos Alcaraz and Fabio Fognini, both players appeared frustrated by the new system, especially given that the challenge system has been eliminated, leaving only video replays available to players seeking clarification on calls. 

While the automated system aims to improve accuracy of calls, critics argue that the dramatic fashion of challenging calls and the human element are missing.

Formerly, the challenge system allowed players to request a second look at a call via Hawk-Eye several times per match, often creating crowd engagement and drama during matches. 

Furthermore, there have been reports of problems regarding the volume of the calling system.

In the women’s draw, Chinese player Yuan Yue expressed her issues, saying: “The voice, I cannot really hear it, it is a bit too low. So I asked the referee, ‘Can you [turn] it up a little bit?’ He said he cannot. He said he will try to let us know [the call] because he has a machine that can look it up. I don’t really mind, I just want to hear it clearly. [The umpire’s] voice is a lot more loud than the automatic one, so we can hear that clear. Other tournaments don’t really have this problem.”

Similarly, Jelena Ostapenko, who faced Britain’s Sonay Kartal in a match involving a player who had previously lost a point during this year’s Australian Open due to a call from another court, voiced similar concerns: “I hit a few shots that were at a pretty big moment and the crowd kind of went nuts, so maybe I lost [the call] a bit in that.”

Over multiple matches, this new system has encountered various issues, such as making  calls during situations where the point was not being played. 

Moreover, there was an incident where a human mistake led to the system being turned off and missing three calls during the fourth round match between Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Sonay Kartal.

A more serious technical malfunction occurred during the quarter-final match between American Taylor Fritz and Karen Khachanov, where, because the service motion of the player started while the ball kid was crossing the net, the system did not recognize the start of the point.

As a result, the point had to be replayed.

With this historic change, Roland Garros, also known as the French Open, remains the only Grand Slam tournament to have human line judges, as both the Australian Open and US Open have implemented automated systems in previous years.

Many viewers, while they agree that the new electronic system is far more accurate, have expressed reservations, saying that replacing the traditional line judges takes away from the sport’s character and tradition.