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Get in line: Tennis’ tradition vs. technology

Tennis markets itself as a gladiator-style sport, two players, alone on the court. But they are hardly alone. It’s a rare TV angle in a tennis match that does not capture the many umpires who clutter the sides of the court, making what looks like bicycle lane-change signals to show if a ball’s in or out.

At a time when the sport’s TV ratings are low and it is playing catch-up technologically to others in areas like data analytics, tennis still has up to 10 officials ringing the court despite instant replay at hand.

“There are way too many lines people. It looks ridiculous,” said Brad Gilbert, a former player, coach and current ESPN commentator, talking about pro tennis in general.

Tennis has been reluctant to embrace technology when it comes to officiating, instead having up to 10 umpires positioned around the court.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
Imagine 110 referees on an NFL field, or 45 umpires on a baseball diamond. Crazy, yes, but those would be the numbers if football and baseball utilized the same 10-to-2 umpire-to-player ratio that the U.S. Open deploys on its main courts for singles matches. (NFL games field 22 players and seven refs, while MLB has 10 to 13 players and four umpires.)

Gilbert recalled playing in the late 1980s in California, and his friend, then Golden State Warrior star Chris Mullin, went to a match for the first time and was befuddled, asking him later why there were so many people on the court. “He couldn’t believe it,” Gilbert said. “He said, ‘In basketball we have 10 players, and two (today there are three refs).’ It is the opposite in tennis.”

Of course the technology didn’t exist to call lines then, but it does today.

Most tournaments, and especially large ones like the U.S. Open starting this week, use the electronic line-calling system Hawk-Eye, which Sony acquired in 2011. Tournaments tap into the system, however, only for players to challenge human line calls, not to make them. The challenges are visually displayed on site and on TV.

Image courtesy of Hawk-Eye
“The technology is there,” said Jason Bernstein, managing director of Hawk-Eye USA, and a former ESPN executive. “The technology can be used in any number of ways.”

While tennis is famously tradition bound, this is not pie in the sky talk. The senior men’s tennis tour, the PowerShare Series, used Hawk-Eye for line calling at its 12 events this spring and plans to do so again next year. Owned by Horizon Media, the PowerShare Series employed a single chair umpire for lets and to enforce rules — something Gilbert also suggested — and the players called their own lines.

“In 10 years there will be no lines people on courts,” predicted Jim Courier, the tennis hall of famer and co-founder of the PowerShare Series. “You won’t have players calling but electronic lines people.”

At the lower ends of the professional game, and recreationally, players call their own lines, so it’s not a foreign concept in the sport. The PowerShare Series this season relied on personal line calling, resulting in 15 challenges per night over several matches, Courier said.

However, expecting professionals in any sport to officiate their competition is unlikely. Instead a system that beeps when a ball is out, as Courier suggested with his reference to electronic line umpires, could ease trepidation in the sport about eliminating something so ingrained in tennis’ cultural topography.

Tennis more than many sports is well-suited to remove most human officiating. It’s simple whether a ball is in or out, unlike difficult judgment calls in other sports like whether a wide receiver pushed off a defender to make a catch, or a basketball player took a charge or blocked the lane.

Nevertheless, tennis is clearly resistant, for both cultural and money reasons.

Chris Kermode, the ATP Tour executive chairman and former player, said there are many more issues for the sport than this one. And he expressed worry such a system could put players in the awkward position of having to call their own lines.

Similarly unimpressed is David Brewer, the U.S. Open tournament director.

Bringing tech to tennis

HAWK-EYE
The Sony-owned company has been bringing shot-tracking technology to tennis since the mid-2000s. At first used only on broadcasts, the tournaments slowly allowed it for replay challenges, and the company says the technology could be used to call lines.

ESPN
Perhaps no greater contribution to tennis viewing has come than from ESPN3, which allows viewers on phones, tablets or computers to choose which matches they wish to watch. If the sport is to gain younger viewers, products like ESPN3 are essential.

IBM
The standard bearer among the Grand Slams, the company handles all the back-end work for websites, spewing out reams of data for each of tennis’ four biggest events.

SAP
The WTA Tour sponsor is bringing coaching tablets onto the court. With all the obsession over statistics in other sports, tennis players had no access to such data. Say an upcoming opponent always has trouble on second serves to the backhand. Didn’t matter, no one knew. Now players, through the WTA, can get access to this type of information. A coach in the stands has the information on his or her tablet, and the player can call him or her onto the court. Will the ATP, and the Grand Slams, follow suit?

PLAYSIGHT
So far, this early stage company is focused only on the recreational market. It sells customized courts, outfitted with sensors and cameras that offer data and video analysis of a player’s game. The potential translation to the pros is clear. Imagine electronic line calling or highlights that could immediately be shown on video boards.
                                                          — Daniel Kaplan

“We are not thinking about it,” he said. “It is easier to just let the players just be players and let them focus on what they do.”

The U.S. Tennis Association, which owns the U.S. Open, though, conceded in court filings in February 2014 that it could reduce the number of officials. Responding to a class action lawsuit brought by umpires for back pay (the case has since been dismissed), the USTA’s attorneys wrote, “[T]ennis matches can (and are) conducted without umpires. And although plaintiffs claim that umpires are always used at U.S. Open matches, it is undisputed that the number of umpires used for different matches varies. Thus, plaintiffs cannot claim that a full contingent of line umpires is integral to conducting the U.S. Open.”

At the heart of the matter is also cost. Only one tournament in the world — out of over 100 ATP, WTA and Grand Slam events — has Hawk-Eye on every court: billionaire Larry Ellison’s BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif. The U.S. Open has it on five of its 17 playing courts.

Hawk-Eye’s Bernstein declined to comment on cost, but sources said the company charges up to $80,000 per court for three weeks. This includes the cameras, hardware and an employee to monitor the technology. That makes it cost prohibitive for many smaller ATP and WTA events to have it on more than one court, before one even begins talking about enhancing the technology to take over full line calling.

“We have considered it, but the issue for smaller events is a cost issue,” said Ilana Kloss, president of World TeamTennis. “If you are looking at it just from calling a line, a computer is better than a live person. It is a no-brainer.”

Line umpires are fairly inexpensive, though. According to court filings made in the USTA class-action lawsuit, in 2011 the U.S. Open paid umpires between $115 and $250 per day, and hired between 285 and 316 of them. That is peanuts for an event that brings in upward of $20 million a day during the main two weeks. The tournament stretches three weeks (including qualifying), and the umpires are not needed on all days.

At the moment, there is not a Hawk-Eye competitor on the horizon with the promise of bringing cost down for electronic line calling. PlaySight, which Novak Djokovic and Billie Jean King invested in, is a small Israeli startup that manufacturers what it promotes as smart courts that collect data analytics and can call lines. These courts cost $10,000 each and $750 a month to maintain, but the line-calling feature is not the primary focus, said Mark Ein, who owns the WTT’s Washington Kastles and is an investor in PlaySight.

“The core value of PlaySight is about bringing other core technologies to the court,” Ein said, like video analysis and data collection. Still, Ein added of line calling, “I can’t believe in today’s world somebody can’t figure out how to do it and at the right price point.”

And it’s not just a straight comparison between what events pay umpires to what Hawk-Eye costs. Tournaments may lose commercial inventory because of the presence of lines officials. They stand in front of valuable back walls where more sponsor names could appear or are there but obscured.

“There are all these people standing in front of the signage,” said John Korff, a former USTA board member. “You can’t see the sign.”

Instead, you see those people hunched over, hands on knees, making bicycle lane-change signals.

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