If John McEnroe played in the age of Hawk-Eye, the world may have missed out on hearing him object to line call by screaming, "You can't be serious!" The Hawk-Eye tennis system is a computerized line calling and officiating network. It's used in every major tennis tournament, including the United States Open, Wimbledon, and the Australian Open. Every time you see a computer-generated rendering of where a ball hit near or on a line you're seeing the Hawk-Eye system at work. Getting that information, however, requires a complicated array of cameras and computer software.
History
The Hawk-Eye system was created in 1999 by Steven Hawkins of Great Britain. Unveiled in 2001 after a year and a half in development, Hawk-Eye's first application was for making line calls in cricket. In 2006 Hawk-Eye was first used in tennis to make line calls . It made its Grand Slam debut at the 2006 U.S. Open. Shortly afterward, new rules were adopted to accommodate the new technology when the game introduced instant replay so players could challenge whatever call Hawk-Eye registered.
Cameras
Hawk-Eye works by first calibrating at least half a dozen cameras to track a tennis ball as it travels through the air. The cameras are each aimed directly at the center of the ball. Any errors that may arise from movement of the cameras themselves is made up for by also having the cameras follow the lines of the court so the ball and the lines remain in constant relation and perspective to one another.
3-D
Because there are so many cameras tracking the ball at once, they are able to capture simultaneous images of the ball and its trajectory from multiple angles. This allows the cameras to then render those images in a software program that turns the ball into a 3-D graphic. That 3-D image is what's shown to television viewers and officials at the stadium. And that trajectory is followed to where the ball hits. The software then produces an image of the ball hitting the ground and leaving a virtual mark.
Accuracy
Hawk-Eye was tested in 2006 by the International Tennis Federation. According to the inventors and manufacturers of Hawk-Eye, that testing found the system to be 100 percent accurate. The amount of error overall was 3.66 mm from exactly pinpointing the spot where the ball struck the court. Since its widespread use in tennis, players questioning calls that were then confirmed or denied by Hawk-Eye were correct only 46 times out of 100. As John McEnroe might say, that's pretty serious.
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