Wimbledon to Replace Line Judges With Electronic Line Calling

The line judges at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club have made their last call. 

Wimbledon’s historic venue announced Wednesday that The Championships in 2025 will be played with live automated electronic line calling, ending a 147-year tradition. The AELTCC’s line judges, who were known for their distinctive uniforms (sometimes outfitted by Polo Ralph Lauren), were a staple of the major. The club employed approximately 300 judges every year to work the tournament across its 18 courts. 

Wimbledon joins the US Open and Australian Open as the other majors currently employing the system. The French Open is now the only tennis major that hasn’t adopted ELC. 

“The decision to adopt Live ELC was made following the successful completion of extensive testing during this year’s Championships and builds on the existing ball tracking and line calling technology that has been in place for many years,” the AELTCC said in a statement Wednesday.

ELC is powered by artificial intelligence and was first introduced at the 2020 US Open, primarily to reduce the number of people on the court during the COVID-19 pandemic. The system turned out to be more effective than the human operation and has since become the players’ preferred officiating system in matches. 

Some of the sport’s prominent players have called for video review and Hawk-Eye technology, which includes ELC, to be part of every major, especially after Félix Auger-Aliassime was eliminated from the Cincinnati Open on a controversial call by a line judge in August. 

“They should have it at every tournament,” Ben Shelton, the No. 16–ranked singles player, recently told Front Office Sports Today. “There’s too much at stake. We’re too advanced a sport. We have a Hawk-Eye live system that can call every single bounce on the court, every shot, but we can’t review whether a guy hit the ball down off his racket into the ground or up and over? We should do a better job and have that at every tournament.”

Taylor Fritz, the No. 7–ranked singles player echoed Shelton’s comments and wondered why tournaments would show instant replay on the big screen for fans, yet not use it in service of the players. 
“It’s already there so it seems a little bit ridiculous the players can’t use it under certain circumstances,” Fritz told FOS Today in August. “That is one instance where it makes no sense why they wouldn’t have it.”