French Open director Amelie Mauresmo has backed her line judges, saying she has no immediate plans to introduce the technology at Roland Garros despite a controversial call during Casper Ruud’s loss against Joao Fonseca.<\/p>\n
Ruud, a two-time runner-up in Paris, ultimately lost the fourth-round match 7-5, 7-6(10\/8), 5-7, 6-2, but during the second-set tiebreaker, with Ruud up 8-7, a spectator in the crowd shouted that a forehand down the line hit by Fonseca had landed out.<\/p>\n
The chair umpire came down to check the mark and ruled that the Brazilian’s shot was in, handing him the point.<\/p>\n
An electronic line-calling on television showed the ball was out, but the Parisian tournament does not use the ball-tracking technology like the other grand slams, with tradition-obsessed Wimbledon last year joining the Australian and US Opens in ditching line judges.<\/p>\n
Mauresmo said after the match that she still prefers humans over technology because it cannot be entirely trusted.<\/p>\n
“What we observed at the clay-court tournaments leading up to Roland Garros is that the reliability of this system is not absolute,” she told reporters.<\/p>\n
“As of today, the machine is not 100 per cent reliable, so we continue to place our confidence in human officials.”<\/p>\n
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French Open director and former world number one Amelie Mauresmo. (AP: Michel Euler, file photo)<\/p>\n
The WTA and ATP have added machine-generated rulings for red-clay events, but Grand Slam hosts make their own rules.<\/p>\n
Although disputes over marks on the surface are not rare at Roland Garros, Mauresmo said many players recognise the system is not entirely reliable on clay, a live surface that constantly changes with weather conditions and poses challenges to accurate digital tracking.<\/p>\n
“So we have received no real feedback pushing us in that direction [of electronic line-calling],” she said, adding that there will be a review after the tournament.<\/p>\n