{"id":24319,"date":"2026-06-25T02:55:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T02:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/24319\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T02:55:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T02:55:25","slug":"no-line-judges-causes-wimbledon-qualifying-suspension-after-heatwave-breaks-hawk-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/24319\/","title":{"rendered":"No line judges causes Wimbledon qualifying suspension after heatwave breaks Hawk-Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five of those 16 matches at Roehampton involved British hopefuls. Dan Evans<\/a> \u2013 the long-serving Davis Cup campaigner and former world No 21 who announced his imminent retirement earlier this month \u2013 was a set down to Australia\u2019s Tristan Schoolkate at the time of the interruption. Former British No 1 Evans didn\u2019t win another game after the interruption, and later admitted that the interruption had been disruptive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was playing really well when I went off, and he wasn\u2019t playing… well, he was playing alright, but not as good as I knew he could play,\u201d said Evans. \u201cAnd he was too good when we came back. I think he went 10 from 10 first serves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took the sting out of the match a bit. I was really in the match. But all credit to him, he played well. Yes, just a bit disappointing, but that\u2019s life, isn\u2019t it? I went in the ice bath very quickly [during the break], and then had a shower, got changed. It hasn\u2019t happened to me before but it\u2019s just so hot, isn\u2019t it? I guess something happened, but yes, a first in my career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evans had also contended with a blinky Hawk-Eye Live system in his first-round qualifying match against Juan Carlos Prado Angelo on Monday, but in that instance, chair umpire Damien Dumusois was still getting the data on his tablet screen, and was able to make any necessary calls until the system rebooted.<\/p>\n

This latest interruption was much more wide-ranging, with play being interrupted soon after noon. The players did not return for around 90 minutes.<\/p>\n

Wimbledon brought in Hawk-Eye Live to replace human line judges<\/a> last summer, but there were teething problems from the start. An operator accidentally turned Centre Court\u2019s line-calling off for more than six minutes during a fourth-round match, while British players Jack Draper<\/a> and Emma Raducanu were among those who publicly questioned the accuracy<\/a> of decision-making.<\/p>\n

Plans are afoot to move this tournament into the former Wimbledon Park Golf Course site which adjoins the main Wimbledon site, but they have been mired in legal disputes with neighbouring protest groups for the last four years, and it will take the best part of a decade for any new grass courts to bed down in any case.<\/p>\n

Evans, whose final outing as a tennis professional will come in the men\u2019s doubles event at Wimbledon, was once again scathing about the Lawn Tennis Association officials who failed to support his case for wild cards in his final summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot one member of the LTA came to watch one of my matches,\u201d said Evans. \u201cActually, [national coach] Colin Beecher did because he\u2019s my friend. It\u2019s not that deep, chaps or ladies. So that\u2019s how you want to act, carry on, it\u2019s pathetic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t be campaigning for my player\u201d \u2013 the former Wimbledon boys champion Henry Searle, whom Evans is coaching \u2013 \u201cto be playing Davis Cup, because it didn\u2019t get me very far, did it? I\u2019m a little too far up the M40 [for the LTA\u2019s liking]. I spoke about working-class people in tennis, and that didn\u2019t go down well. They like to keep things under wraps, and, you know, play to their tune.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked what he would miss about the sport, the Solihull-based Evans replied: \u201cThis is probably the wrong analogy, but it\u2019s probably the best drug in the world, winning and losing, if that makes sense. You feel so good and then you have match points and lose, and you feel so bad, you think the world\u2019s over. One week, you can be awful and, like, lose seven in a row. You can then win Washington [the ATP 500 event that Evans claimed in 2023]. It gives you a chance every week, which is like no other job, I think, or sport.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five of those 16 matches at Roehampton involved British hopefuls. Dan Evans \u2013 the long-serving Davis Cup campaigner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6648,2871,113,239,28,776],"class_list":["post-24319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-dan-evans","tag-heatwave","tag-sport","tag-standard","tag-tennis","tag-wimbledon-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}