Tennis needs video review, but VAR lessons from football will be key to success

Opaque communication. Long-winded considerations. An astonishing result.

Tennis, welcome to VAR: the source of existential fears, frustration and anger across the English Premier League.

That may sound like an exaggeration, but not since the introduction of Video Assistant Referees (VAR) in English football’s top flight five years ago has there been a topic so hotly debated in the sport. It has become the football equivalent of Brexit – deepening divisions and becoming the reference point for virtually every point of contention, just as the United Kingdom’s drawn-out secession from the European Union did in politics.

In tennis, however, video review has been slow to adopt, but its ghost has haunted the sport in recent months. Jack Draper earned a match point against Felix Auger-Aliassime at the ATP Masters 1000 Cincinnati Open in August with a shot that was shown to be illegal on video. Referee Greg Allensworth awarded Draper the point and did not have access to video review to correct him.

The specter appeared again on Tuesday in Basel, Switzerland, at an ATP 500 tournament that uses Electronic Line Calling (ELC) but no video scoring. World number 36 Tomas Martin Etcheverry had an error made by referee Arnaud Gabas in his match against world number 23 Ben Shelton after Gabas ruled that a return of service hit by Shelton had hit Etcheverry on the leg hit before it bounced off. If a player is hit by the ball before it has bounced, the opponent scores the point.

The ball had actually bounced before it hit, which was clearly visible on the television replays, allowing everyone except the referee to determine what actually happened. Instead, Shelton received the point.

Excerpts of the incident from Tennis TV, the ATP-owned streaming service, circulated on social media immediately after the incident. They were soon “taken down in response to a report from the copyright holder” and the incident was not included in the Tennis TV highlights package uploaded to YouTube.

“These things can’t keep happening,” Etcheverry said on Instagram after the game.

In elite sport, video review is currently limited to the US Open, but it will be used at the season-ending ATP Finals in Turin, Italy, November 10-17. The ATP Tour is exploring the possibility of using the system at its higher-level events starting in 2025; The WTA Tour has yet to make a decision.

Despite improving a number of decisions, the video scoring system at this year’s tournament in New York has fallen squarely into all the pitfalls that surround football. Referee Miriam Bley made a wrong decision using her advantage during a third-round match between Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya and Brazil’s Beatriz Haddad Maia on Saturday, August 31.

On the third play of the game, Haddad Maia tried to block a drop shot. She got to the ball and won the point, but Kalinskaya believed it was an illegal shot and disputed the referee’s call using the video scoring system.

His reps seemed to support Kalinskaya. Although Haddad Maia reached the ball before it bounced twice, she appeared to have hit it into the ground before it reached the opponent’s side of the net. (Draper did the same against Auger-Aliassime.)

Bley felt differently and stuck with her original decision. That only added to the disbelief not only of Kalinskaya but of almost everyone watching, because it’s one thing for an official to get a close call wrong in that moment, and quite another to get it wrong, even with the benefit of replays . This is a dynamic that has continued to emerge since the introduction of VAR in English football.

The following Sunday, the US Tennis Association (USTA) confirmed that the call was incorrect. The organization said a further, conclusive angle only became available after Bley reviewed the incident and made her decision. Football fans know this scenario all too well: an explanation comes, but only serves to fuel the feeling of “too little, too late”. Kalinskaya ended up losing the game 6-3, 6-1 and never really recovered from the injustice.

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Tennis is far more suitable for video reviews than football. It is stop-start in nature and has a much more detailed rating system. In football, one of the lowest-scoring sports of all, the few moments in which goals are scored are often marred by lengthy official monitoring by VAR.

Most importantly, most decisions in football are subjective and determined by an individual referee’s interpretation of a rule or set of rules at any given time. This was one of the biggest problems with the introduction of VAR, as fans who supported the technology thought they would have controversial calls sorted out by all-knowing decision makers who could quickly say whether something was legal or not. Instead, the video review system has shown that many calls in football are still controversial and subjective, even when they are studied by officials in their assigned area miles from the action.

In contrast, tennis is a sport with largely objective decisions. A ball is in or out no matter how close it is; A ball has bounced once or twice, no matter how close it is. This is why Hawk-Eye line call verification technology, introduced in the mid-2000s, was such a success. It’s a similar story in cricket and the video reviews have been similarly successful.

2024 marked the second year that the US Open used video reviews, allowing players to challenge certain referee judgments in their game. According to the USTA, these calls include, but are not limited to: “When a ball bounces twice; if a player was prevented from playing a point; And ‘Touches‘: when a ball touches a player’s racket or clothing before it lands. Players (and doubles teams) receive three challenges per set and one more in the tiebreak.” Video reviews were available on courts 5, 7, 11 and 12 as well as the main courts of the show.

In Etcheverry’s case, a video review would have immediately corrected the referee’s decision and awarded him the point. With the score at the time 2-3, 15-30 in the first set, losing a point he should have won meant Etcheverry was left two break points behind in a set and a match he ultimately lost. Auger-Aliassime should have been given a break after match point.

In Haddad Maia v. Kalinskaya, some people agreed with Bley’s view that Haddad Maia had fired a legal shot. The goal briefly became subjective until the USTA belatedly intervened and provided a more coherent perspective that was not available to the referee. As football has discovered, even as technology helps officials, it is still people who make the final decision.

Humans are fallible; These are not suddenly decisions made by all-knowing ref-bots immune to subjectivity and error. Most importantly for tennis, in the current version, the video review operators are not the arbiters of the final decision. They essentially play the role of technical support, with the referee reviewing the call. This creates the impression that one is grading one’s own homework, leading to concerns that officials will be less likely to reverse their own decisions.

As tennis expands its use of video reviews, it will likely encounter another lesson from football: the need to at least try to anticipate the unintended and unforeseen consequences of its wider adoption. In football, differences in the interpretation of laws from league to league and competition to competition – particularly between the English Premier League and the UEFA Champions League – have led to further confusion among fans. Tennis will not have this problem, but its highly fragmented infrastructure will likely result in differences in how video review is used from tournament to tournament.

The four Grand Slams are already taking different approaches to refereeing and the use of Hawk-Eye, from fully electronic line calling at the US Open to ball mark inspection and zero technology at the French Open. Only this year, after 147 years, Wimbledon decided to use ELC in favor of linesmen.

While video reviews are likely to be far more effective than in football, there is still a lesson to be learned from five years of VAR: if you think video technology will be a panacea for controversial referee calls, you’re likely to end up disappointed.

(Top photo: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)