Tennis Takes Giant Step Forward to Break Away From the Shackles of Its Conventionality as ATP Announces Player-Friendly Move

Every year, clay court season comes with a lot of drama. A major reason behind it is the confusion between the players and the line judges over line calls. Clay court facilitates the ball to leave a mark on the court. However, there still have been a lot of wrong calls affecting the nature of the match. So, in a path-breaking move, ATP has announced a breakaway from the traditional line calling by implementing the Hawk-eye technology.

The use of haw-eye technology and electric line calling is quite prevalent during the hard-court and grass-court seasons. However, this new move is going to change the nature of the game for the clay court by 2025.

ATP announces a path-breaking move to revolutionize tennis with technology 

Tennis carries a long history of vehemently following traditions and customs. One very common one is the prevalent use of line judges to make a line call on the courts, especially on clay courts.

Both hard court and grass court seasons have moved away from linespersons, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the clay court still showed resistance to the same. But this all will soon come to an end as ATP has decided to use Electric Line Calling (ELC), commonly known as ELC Live for all “out” calls from 2025 onwards. This applies to all matches, irrespective of the court.

However, the chair umpire will still oversee the match. The role of line judges is the one that is going to see a drastic change. There will be no line judges during the ATP matches. ATP CEO Andrea Gaudenzi stated, “This is a landmark moment for our sport and not one we’ve reached without careful consideration. Tradition is core to tennis and line judges have played an important part in the game over the years.”

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There has not been any confirmation from the WTA till now but ATP has made its call. Manual line calling has become a point of contention multiple times. Recently, Novak Djokovic had an outburst at the Monte Carlo Masters because of the same reason.

Wrong line calling led Novak Djokovic to lose his temper

During the pandemic, we saw a decline in the presence of line judges and since then, most tournaments have adapted ELC or Hawk-eye. But the clay court tournaments have remained quite adamant and hence triggered an on-court outburst from Novak Djokovic.

During this year’s Monte Carlo Masters, Djokovic was facing Lorenzo Musetti. When the chair umpire made a wrong line call, Djokovic tried to reason her out of it but she gave her verdict and he lost a point. However, later on, it was found out through electric line calling that the ball was not “out”.

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Eventually, Djokovic gave into his emotions and broke a racquet. Similar incidences during clay-court matches are not uncommon. However, now this new move will pave the way for less controversies.