What Does The Hawk Eye System In Tennis?

Tennis is a popular sport being played all over the world. Starting from the late 19th century, when the first Wimbledon Championship was introduced, not only did the sport gain popularity in terms of the number of players, the number of spectators have also increased significantly. The growing enthusiasm in tennis serves as a motivation for it to be constantly improving, especially when the sport is being played at a professional level. With regards to this, technology has been slowly incorporated into tennis over the past few years, one of them being the Hawk-Eye System. This paper seeks to answer the question: “Does the Hawk-Eye System serve to improve the standard of umpiring in tennis?” After a thorough research and analysis, I would like
It was officially introduced in 2001 during a Test Cricket event. Soon, the system began to be introduced into many other sports such as badminton, football and volleyball. After carrying out some tests in a few competitions, the technology officially began to be used in Tennis during the 2006 US Open, one of the Grand-Slam event (Fetters, 2012). What exactly does the Hawk-Eye do? It works by placing 10 cameras around the court, and then the flight path of the tennis ball is captured and recorded by the cameras from different angles. The result of the most likely path taken by the tennis ball and where it lands will then be analyzed statistically and shown on the computer (Fetters, 2012). The Hawk-Eye System is a useful tool because even with the presence of umpires and linesmen, human error cannot be avoided. Many problems occurred in past competitions when the tennis player was not satisfied with the call made by the linesmen, but had no evidence to argue against
Rather, it is being utilized in a system called the Hawk-Eye Challenge System. A player is given 3 challenges per set in a match. During each set, whenever the player thinks that a line call being made is not accurate, he has the chance to challenge the call by using the Hawk-Eye. That particular shot, which is recorded and analyzed in the computer, will then be portrayed on a large screen, and can be viewed by all spectators, either at the venue of the competition or through the television at home. If the challenge made was unsuccessful, the number of challenges remaining would be reduced by 1; if the challenge was successful, the number of challenges would remain the same (Wood, 2008). In the past, there were constantly disputes between the line judges and players over the line call. Researchers discovered that as of 2008, 84% of the call made by the line judges were falsely judged, mainly due to how the brain failed to process the actual movement of the ball which was moving too quickly (Alleyne, 2008). Hence, the Hawk-Eye System is used to assist the umpire to make the most unbiased decision by showing the most accurate movement and the position of the