The Eye of a Hawk.

The officiating of sport has been a topic of debate since sports began, and it doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. Referees, linesmen, umpires and all other types of officials tend to be the subject of public scrutiny every weekend. No matter what sport is in question, there is never a perfect game. After all, the officials are only human, and they all make mistakes. Only a machine could make perfect decisions every time, but that is nearly impossible…or is it?

New technologies are continuously being introduced to sport to make the life of referees easier when it comes to making tight decisions. The latest technology which has caused much controversy is the Video Assisted Referee (VAR) being used in football. It is still a relatively new technology, and it will need a bit more time to prove whether it is worth using at all. In contrast, Hawk-Eye is a technology that has been used in tennis for a number of years. It began testing in early 2005 and was approved later in the year. It was introduced to tennis in response to the 2004 Women’s quarter-final, where Serena Williams, arguably the best women’s tennis player of all time, lost out to Jennifer Capriati due to several incorrect decisions made by the umpires and line judges. Another tennis great, John McEnroe was commentating on the game, and commented that the game was “getting ridiculous”. The match immediately generated controversy about the need for line-calling technology. Introduce Hawk-Eye. Tennis umpiring was about the change forever (Newcomb, 2015).

Paul Hawkins founded Hawk-Eye, with the intention for it to be used in cricket. It consists of a system made up of cameras mounted at different angles to take pictures. The pictures locate the position of the ball and are then used to form a visualization of the trajectory of the ball. In cricket, the model includes the pitch, the field, the batsmen and the fielders. This was then obviously quite easy to translate into tennis.

The entertainment and suspense of Hawk-Eye is an unexpected byproduct of the technology. The five to ten second period between the player's challenge and the result of the review builds excitement in the stadium. Hawk-Eye is precise to within 3.6

mm (Powcast Sports, 2019). This is undoubtedly more accurate than the human eye, so when a player challenges the umpires call, it makes for an exciting atmosphere to see who is correct. Nobody is perfect though, including robots, and the 3.6mm margin of error is arguably too large at times when the distance between the ball and the line is extremely small. In these cases, Hawk-Eye can sometimes make errors by calling a ball in when, in fact, it is out. Some estimates suggest that Hawk-Eye only gets it right in tennis 60% of the time (De Freitas, 2012).

When Hawk-Eye goes wrong.

Ultimately, electronic judging reduces the errors that humans make when umpiring in sport. It is an expensive technology to implement, so it is only used in the main stadiums and courts around the world. Its popularity is constantly increasing though, and Hawk-Eye is used in many more sports than just tennis and cricket where it began. In Gaelic Games, it isn’t used to check whether the ball was inside a line, but instead, it checks if the ball was inside the post. It doesn’t always get it right, but technology is improving day after day, so who knows? With the way technology is changing, robotics could replace many jobs that humans currently do. In a couple of years, Hawk-Eye could be 100% accurate all of the time, and referees and umpires could be a thing of the past.

Hawk-Eye is now used in Gaelic Games, but it can make mistakes there too.

References

[1] Newcomb, T., 2015. Sports Illustrated - The history of tennis umpiring: How Hawk-Eye changed the game. [online] Available at: <https://www.si.com/tennis/2015/11/11/history-of-hawk-eye-tennis-umpiring> [Accessed 26 February 2020]

[2] De Freitas, W., 2012. The Conversation - A Hawk-Eye for detail: how accurate is electronic judging in sport? [online] Available at: <https://theconversation.com/a-hawk-eye-for-detail-how-accurate-is-electronic-judging-in-sport-8136> [Accessed 27 February 2020]

[3] Unknown, 2019. Powcast Sports - Is the Hawk-Eye system reliable in tennis tournaments? [online] Available at: <https://powcastsports.com/is-the-hawk-eye-system-reliable-in-tennis-tournaments/> [Accessed 27 February 2020]