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Does Hawk Eye Eliminate Players Personality On Court?
6 Comments · Posted by Scoop Malinowski in Articles, Scoop
An interesting exchange happened during the Harrison-Fish Tennis Channel match in Indian Wells yesterday. Jim Courier commented that he believes the Hawk Eye system has clearly improved the sport, then the other announcer in the booth (don’t know his name) suggested that Hawk Eye and the elimination of arguments about controversial or mistaken line calls has taken away the element of players showing and revealing some of their personalities.
Courier replied that players arguing angrily and or negatively is not something the sport misses and promptly ended the discussion there in order to focus on the drama of the third set of Fish vs. Harrison.
But I wondered about the topic. Players arguing angrily like John McEnroe, as Courier implied, is not the only consequence of arguing line calls. Not every player goes ballistic like McEnroe. Bjorn Borg even got into the fray once at Madison Square Garden, by discussing something with the chair umpire, without going bananas like McEnroe often did. Some do it quietly and gently, others their own way.
I think the Hawk Eye system has been a fantastic innovation for the sport and has cut down on a bad line call ruining the outcome of a match. But it also has stopped the fans from seeing the players mix it up verbally with an umpire, which is always nice to see, because it shows an aspect of the player’s character and it breaks up the monotony of a match by injecting some drama or controversy. Today in tennis, there isn’t as much controversy because Hawk Eye prevents it.
Drama still can happen though, such as Jerzy Janowicz screaming “HOW MANY TIMES?” at the chair ump a few years back at the Aussie Open. Just a few weeks ago Alize Cornet ran out of Challenges and made an emotional plea for the umpire or line judge to overrule what she thought was a bad call against her. It’s always fun to watch the players express something different than a fist pump, COME AWN, or a finger point to the towel boy.
Player-chair umpire dramas are pretty much a thing of the past now because of the perfection of Hawk Eye. Whether that’s a undisputed benefit or loss for tennis is debatable.
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6 comments
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Dan Markowitz · March 13, 2015 at 1:49 pm
Scoop, late for Young match out here, but I don’t like Hawkeye. Found it much more interesting when players had to deal with the umpires and then their own internal emotions. Much more like personal drama. Mohammad Lahyani got a kick yesterday after he umpired Coric match when I told him that I go to matches just to watch him umpire and whether he had a theater background. He said he hadn’t, but was very gracious and said he does what he does because he loves sport.
Scoop Malinowski · March 13, 2015 at 2:39 pm
Agree Dan on all counts. Prefer the flawed human factor in determining a match, not robotic perfection. Layhani is the best umpire. Need to do a Biofile on him. Never seen the guy mess up a match, he’s like a symphony conductor out there.
Scoop Malinowski · March 13, 2015 at 4:53 pm
Querrey was up set and break on Stakhovskiy who had break point and hopped around to change return position to bother Sam, which it did. Sam’s been crumbling ever since down 1-4 in third set now. Courier called it a junior move by Stak. But Sam’s reaction of letting it bother him, which it clearly did, without taking the matter into his own hands, was an even worse counter reaction. Sam has to be able to stand up and call Stak out on it or put him in his place. Sam’s too nice flaw coming out again. Players have to be able to deal with gamesmanship and trickery. Sam doesn’t do it and just plays it straight. Sam has the game but and the weapons but the mental toughness is lacking.
Bryan · March 14, 2015 at 4:11 pm
“Jerzy Janowicz screaming “HOW MANY TIMES?†at the chair ump a few years back at the Aussie Open.”
That was one of the funniest things I’ve seen since the days of Johhny Mac. While it’s true Hawkeye mutes a lot of the drama we had in prior decades it’s for the better. I like drama, but not at the expense of costing players matches.
In fact I wish other sports would use replay more, like boxing and European football which clearly would benefit and referee decisions can lead to a bogus “win.”
Scoop Malinowski · March 14, 2015 at 4:44 pm
Jerzy’s HOW MANY TIMES was the outburst of the decade so far 🙂 Gonna be tough to top that one.
Gaurang · March 14, 2015 at 8:33 pm
By far, I prefer to see fair results which are enabled by Hawk Eye than drama. There’s plenty of drama in the course of the match anyway, and one can see plenty of player personality in how he handles bad situations, etc.