IDuring his quarterfinal victory against Karen Khachanov on Court 1 on Tuesday, Taylor Fritz was involved in yet another Wimbledon incident. The American was once more enraged, this time by a fault in the Electronic Line Calling (ELC) system, which has already caused controversy during the competition, just days after being irritated by the curfew regulations. In the end, chair umpire Louise Azemar-Engzell had to halt play and demand that the point be replayed.

The incident happened during the first game of the fourth set, when Fritz was ahead 6-3, 6-4, 1-6. The ELC system blared out a "Fault" alert as Khachanov got ready to strike a forehand—the fourth shot of the rally—interrupting the point.

Although the system correctly identified Fritz's first serve at 15-0 as a fault, the second serve landed in, and three shots were played before the mistake occurred.

"What was that?" BBC commentator Todd Woodbridge asked. "The electronic line system has jumped the gun because that serve wasn't 121 mph, that was the second serve," co-commentator John Lloyd replied.

As the cameras showed Fritz visibly upset by the delay, the chair umpire placed an emergency call to restart the system. The umpire next informed the audience, "Ladies and gentlemen, we will replay the last point due to a malfunction." "The system is functioning now."

Fritz's serve was broken by Khachanov, who won the replay point. However, the American recovered fast and won the tiebreaker to advance to the semifinals, where he will face Carlos Alcaraz, the two-time reigning champion.

The All England Club subsequently stated that because the ball boy moved during Fritz's second serve, the ELC did not begin, so his forehand was considered to be the serve, which went over the service line and was thus called out.

"The player's service movement started when the BBG was still crossing the net, thus the system didn't identify the beginning of the point," said a spokesperson. Therefore, the Chair Umpire ordered the point to be replayed.

Khachanov, who was defeated in the game, expressed his opposition to the new technology that was implemented at Wimbledon this year during the post-match press conference.

"To be honest, I'm more in favor of line umpires," he stated. I'm not sure. Without line judges, you may feel that the court is a little bit too large and isolated. Although it seems that AI and electronic line calls must be absolutely accurate and error-free, we have witnessed a few errors. The cause of this is unknown. What causes the problem—if it's not simply a malfunction of the machine? There were probably a couple of calls today, in my opinion. It's really hard to tell if it's actually touching the line or not. The device also screamed it out during the rally at one point. You know, it can occasionally be frightening to let machines do whatever they want.

Supporting the use of line judges over the ELC, Fritz made many similar points.

The fifth seed predicted, "There are going to be some issues here and there."

I do prefer not having to consider calling calls in the middle of points, so I still believe it's far preferable to have the electronic line call the lines rather than the umpires.

"I like that we don't have to fight over calls and all this other stuff. That's all there is to it; we know when the ball is called. I believe it's an improvement.

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