Rafael Nadal believes the potential removal of all lines judges from tennis matches in the future could have a negative impact on the sport.
The 20-time Grand Slam champion has voiced his opposition to the use of electronic line calling following his loss to Dominic Thiem at the ATP Finals on Tuesday. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more tournaments have turned to the use of a Hawk-Eye Live system which decides the calls instead of the traditional process of lines judges on the court. However, in the future Nadal would live to see the sport revert back to its original way.
“I don’t want to create controversy, but I think the traditional court with line judges looks much nicer,” Reuters quoted Nadal as saying.
“Novak said line judges were not needed. All opinions are respected. There are different visions of the sport, but for me I like it less without line judges.
“It’s welcome here so we can adapt to the circumstances but if you ask me towards the future I prefer line judges. It’s true the sport has not changed many things in the last 50 years, compared with the majority of sports, but I don’t think this is a way to improve the spectacle of our sport.”
Nadal’s stance is the complete opposite to rival Novak Djokovic who has previously said he would like to implement the system at all tournaments. The world No.1 was disqualified from the US Open earlier this year for unintentionally hitting a lines judge with a ball. Although he has stated that he has had this opinion for ‘several years’ and it is not related to the incident.
Former world No.1 Nadal argues that the sport receives more value when there is a ‘human element’ included.
“The technology is there, it could be just the two of us in the court if we want,” he said. “But I think the human side gives some more value somehow to the sport.”
The 34-year-old also admits that he has reservations about the accuracy of the system at times. Making reference to a couple of calls that was made during his clash with Thiem which he thought wasn’t entirely correct. James Japhet, who is the managing director of Hawk-Eye North America, previously told the New York Times that 14 out of 225,000 calls by Hawk-Eye Live during the first week of the US Open were erroneous. All of those errors related to operators in the panel room.
“I don’t like this technology. I prefer to have lines (judges) out there. But that’s how it is today and I have no complaint about that,” Nadal concluded.
“I felt a couple of balls (called by Hawk Eye Live) was not the exact mark, but no problem.”
There are currently no plans to implement Hawk-Eye Live throughout either the WTA or ATP Tours.