Wimbledon have deployed automatic line calling technology this year but a huge error in Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova’s match with Sonay Kartal cost the world No 50 dearly
A disappointed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova let her frustrations boil over following a major technical fault during her match with Sonay Kartal, where she accused the line calling technology of ‘stealing’ a point from her.
The incident occurred in the first set of the women’s fourth round match, with the scores on serve at 4-4. A shot from Kartal – which was clearly out – was not called, meaning Pavlyuchenkova did not win the game.
The point was ordered to be replayed, with Kartal going on to land a break of serve just to rub salt in Pavlyuchenkova’s wounds, who let rip at the umpire, Nico Helwerth, at the change of ends.
The world No 50 was shown deep in conversation and could be heard saying: “I don’t know if it’s in or it’s out. How do I know? How can you prove it? Because she is local, they can say whatever. You took the game away from me.”
Helwerth responded: “I have to trust the system. If they tell me it’s up and running there’s nothing we can do. That’s the rule unfortunately.”
But a fuming Pavlyuchenkova added: “They stole a game from me. They stole it.”
While Kartal took advantage of the error, which led to a length delay in proceedings, Pavlyuchenkova roared back to lead 6-5 in the race to clinch the opening set. Kartal stood firm, though, and held serve to force a tie-break.
Two-time Grand Slam winner Tracey Austin outlined the challenge Pavlyuchenkova would face after that huge error in terms of not letting it affect her.
“That is rough for Pavlyuchenkova,” she said on commentary for BBC Sport. “Now you have the job of trying to compose yourself when you know that you should have been a game up.
“This is a mountain to overcome mentally.”
Overcome it she did, though, as Pavlyuchenkova went on to win the first set tie-break 7-3 to take control of her match against the British No 3.
Wimbledon’s decision to implement automated line calls has split opinion this year and the mishap on Centre Court follows comments made by Emma Raducanu, who claimed the technology got calls wrong during her third round defeat to Aryna Sabalenka.
“Yeah, I mean, that call [against Sabalenka] was, like, for sure out,” the Brit said in her post-match press conference. “It’s kind of disappointing, the tournament here, that the calls can be so wrong.
“For the most part they’ve been okay. It’s just, like, I’ve had a few in my other matches, too, that have been very wrong. So yeah, I don’t know. Hopefully they can kind of fix that.”