Last Friday night in Paris, anyone who was watching Carlos Alcaraz and Sebastián Korda's late-night session match on TV coverage, and who had also seen the Zendaya tennis movie you may have heard of called Challengers, had a dizzying flashback.
A camera suddenly appeared from the side of the court, just above the level of the net, moving back and forth as the players fought for control of the net. Barely keeping pace with his speed of movement and thought, he veered from side to side, following the ball across the clay and along the white lines and stopping astonishingly when Korda, the 27th American, parried a ferocious shot from No. .3 seed Alcaraz dead over the net.
It didn't have the blatant aestheticism of Challengers director Luca Guadagnino's work, the camera merging with the ball, but it was a new angle on a sport whose television coverage does little to help the vicious spin and phenomenal speed applied by its best players. that little furry yellow ball.
Innovation. Fun. A little self-awareness. Everything that so many obsessive and casual fans of this sport cry about.
And everything this technology – a small front-facing camera worn by umpires on the French Open exhibition court, Philippe-Chatrier – may not have been intended to be.
-BastinoMedia (@BastinoMedia) May 31, 2024
The world of invention is full of products and devices intended for one purpose that found their place in another.
Bubble wrap was supposed to be three-dimensional wallpaper. Viagra was a new blood pressure medication. Stealing was a safe way to secure naval instruments in rough seas.
Referee-Camera-Head, welcome to the ranks of unintended consequences.
Getting that close-up rotating view was a big part of the thinking when leaders of the French tennis federation, the FFT, began toying with the idea of a camera placed above the chair umpire more than a year ago. There were visions of never-before-seen footage of forehands flying over the net at 80 mph, so fast they seemed to drag the camera with them.
“Let's face it, they have the best seat in the stadium,” said Pascal Maria, assistant referee at the French Open. No one can buy that seat, but the idea was that they could allow fans to experience that view.
From a television perspective, most of the time that didn't go so well. Watching a game on a high-speed spin from up close can be a rather nauseating experience for television producers and fans alike. Instead, the purpose of the technology was diverted to serve a pedestrian, but at Roland Garros, the main purpose: to allow everyone to see the marks that referees look at when deciding whether a ball goes in or out.
Even that hasn't worked very well. When umpires come down from their chairs to inspect ball markings and decide whether their colleagues marking the lines have made a mistake on the job, the shot is so fleeting that it is basically useless, in part because the people using the cameras They are very good, most of the time. —by distinguishing them that they are looking at them for less than a second.
“Good for playback, slower, (but) difficult to cut live,” said Bob Whyley, Tennis Channel's senior vice president of production and executive producer. “The referee's head, looking towards the mark, is too fast.”
Andy Murray asked in X if there was worse technology in sport. Victoria Azarenka questioned why it was available, but more common things, like phone call reviews, are not.
Amelie Mauresmo, tournament director, said officials had scrapped the idea of cutting the main camera for live-action shots after just a few days.
“It's a little complicated,” he said, but if there is good footage, like a chat with a player or an inspection of the ball, that would cause the replay to be cut.
The French Open is alone in introducing cameras, and the other Grand Slams have no plans to incorporate them for now. This is largely due to the fact that the tournament It incorporated cameras in umpire heads to verify line calls, but instead, it created a player's point of view that will go down in tennis history.
Specifically, the referee's take on athletes worth tens of millions of dollars (and more) whining like children begging a parent who won't let them eat dessert or watch TV.
Without Ump-Head, there is no image of the last French hope Corentin Moutet during his match against world number 2 Jannik Sinner on Wednesday night, calling for justice with Nico Helwerth, an experienced tennis official from Germany. He was angry because a linesman had called him for a foot fault on his favorite shot, the underarm serve.
He was wrong and didn't get justice and the audience got to see what it really feels like to be yelled at and nervous by a sweaty, hulking mess. Depending on the level of profanity and the decisions of the broadcast producers, they can also hear exactly what the referee and player are talking about.
Corentin Moutet defends his case (Eurosport)
The referee explains his reasoning (Eurosport)
Louise Engzell, a Swedish referee, said she felt the camera was a kind of security blanket, both for players who went too far and for commentators who inadvertently misrepresented conversations they had with players.
“I prefer that they have information about what really happened in a situation: why the chair umpire made this decision and whether we are 100 percent right or is it a gray area,” Engzell said in an interview about the cameras during one of the many rain delays over the weekend.
At least they know and can discuss the reality of what happened. It can only be good.”
Point-of-view coverage has been a success in other sports: it invites viewers to better understand the speed, effort and difficulty of what they are watching, which can sometimes be softened by the wide-angle view of a television camera.
During a pre-season match between Aston Villa and Newcastle United last summer, Villa footballer Youri Tielemans wore a camera on his chest, demonstrating the speed of thinking that footballers must demonstrate at the highest level, even in a competition with nothing on game. .
This most often works by making it a standalone view (usually outside of a live stream, like Tielemans' highlight video) or by relying on a stationary camera, attached to fixed equipment. In tennis, the court-level camera does a much better job of showing the incredible shape and intensity of players' ball striking, but it removes the context of the angles provided by a wider shot.
It also lacks the extreme shift of a POV camera, which makes a big difference in helping a momentary replay stand out.
Engzell was involved in the first efforts to equip referees with cameras at the French Open last year. Jean-Patrick Reydellet, chief umpire at the French Open, said that involved buying some GoPros and strapping them to the umpire's chest. They did not share the footage with television partners, but reviewed it after the games.
The results were not very good. Some clear views of the court, but the angle didn't quite work. Also, referees don't move their chest much, so there was a lot of footage of the top of the net and the touch screen the referee operates.
Engzell said the chest camera also created an uncomfortable setup for female referees.
Reydellet and his staff evaluated the cameras used by officials in the NBA, rugby and other sports. The in-ear configuration seemed the best. The umpires who were willing to try them out during the qualifying tournament two weeks ago gave the thumbs up, especially after seeing how the camera could show exactly how they inspected a ball mark to see if it landed on the line, following its contour from the clay to compete your girth.
Corentin Moutet defends his case, with the referee's camera visible (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
That hasn't really worked. Part of the reason is that referees only need to take a look, which leaves the viewer with a disorienting head shake and little else. It also doesn't “sell” the decision very well to fans and players, a problem football has experienced with video assistant referee (VAR) when referees change a decision without looking at it themselves.
“He It is a camera that obviously needs improvement,” Reydellet said. “Probably smaller batteries, probably long lasting, probably different configurations that we can work on.”
Part of the goal is also to show how complex the work is. The French Open wants to use the footage to teach aspiring referees, give viewers an idea of everything a player has to do and add a new layer of transparency to the refereeing process and its countless tasks.
In an interview, Helwerth listed the checklist he performs at each point.
Check if the catcher is ready, if the ball kids are in position, if the linesmen are where they are supposed to be, deactivate the serve clock, after having turned it on, enter the last point on the tablet, check the crowd. . When you're done, take a look at the loser of the point to make sure he's behaving. If they come to talk, turn off the stadium microphone (but not the front camera, of course) and then make sure to turn it back on.
“We don't get bored up there,” he said.
This year, the cameras are only being used on the main court, but it's hard not to see them moving to other courts in the future, especially after an umpire inspected the wrong brand of ball to decide a point on the Simonne-Mathieu Court in a match between Zheng Qinwen and Elina Avanesyan.
Maybe next year, someone watching a monitor under the stadium could shout at a transmitter: “No, not that one!”
That would be fine. Not as pretty as Moutet's plan.
(Top photo: Eurosport)
