Tennis is a racquet sport that is played globally by professionals of the sport. The sport features high intensity rallies at an international level with the ball travelling back and forth in parabola at speeds that can be as fast as 200 km/hr.
A tennis match has a chair umpire and line umpires that make the calls on whether the ball has landed outside or within bounds. This is a challenging task as the officials have to be very sharp in tracing where the ball landed. However, modern technologies have nearly thinned down any discrepancy in decision-making. The use of hawk-eye and ball-tracking technologies have ensured fairness in decision making.
In 2023, the US Open introduced the Video Assisted Review (VAR) system which was the first non-graphical review system. Unlike Hawkeye, the video review system depends on multiple cameras placed at specific angulations to record the motion of the ball in slow motion.
When a player challenges a call, the video review system operator sends the best angle of the video to the chair umpire. The screen on the chair umpire’s chair and the stadium screens play the video. Based on this, the chair umpire decides whether the original decision has to be overturned or not.
Some other uses of the video assisted review system includes seeing if the ball has bounced twice or not, and if the players’ conduct has been unsportsmanlike which the umpire can miss out on. The system is currently used only on the men’s tour and is yet to be operational on the women’s tour.
Thus, the video assisted review systems guides the umpires in thorough and truthful decision making.
